engleski

Debt Collection Practices under Croatian Enforcement Law – Is there a way out for over-indebted consumers?

After the recently enacted Amendments of the Enforcement Act of 2017, a further reform of the Croatian enforcement system is expected in 2019. Since 2012, when the current Enforcement Act was introduced, amendments to the Act were adopted on a yearly basis, with the aim of creating a more efficient and simple enforcement system. The foundations of what should be ‘a more operative’ enforcement system were created in 2005, when alongside a court- based enforcement, certain tasks were delegated to public notaries. It seems thattransformation from a purely public to a more private model of enforcement generated further problems, instead of bringing the desired effectiveness. A growing number of over-indebted consumers in Croatia, who are unable to find a way out of indebtedness, reveals deficiencies, which result in abusive debt collection practices within the current enforcement system in Croatia.The paper seeks to explore these abusive collection practices in more detail, while concentrating on the following questions: (1) Whether and to what extent the most recent changes in the Enforcement Act and the suggested introduction of a package of accompanying enforcement laws will actually contribute to their elimination? ; (2) Whether the detected practices can warrant returning to a strictly court-based enforcement, which is advocated by the critics of the current system?

Enforcement ; Croatia ; consumers ; vulnerability ; over-indebtedness

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