The importance of the enforcement procedure is best illustrated by the European Court of Human Rights which said that enforcement of judicial decisions should be treated as an integral part of the basic human right to a fair trial within a reasonable time. Therefore, the system of bailiffs was a real need, not just a stage to meet the European criteria.
Since the introduction of the institute of bailiffs in our legal system significantly enhanced the enforceability of the judgment, and finally justice has full meaning and all the data. While it is currently engaged in 29 of the planned 52 public enforcement agents, some of which cover more than one municipality, they had to go through more than 20,000 cases and collect over 35 million claims. And the time limit within which the claims were paid was significantly shortened as indicated by the Law on Enforcement and Security, which provides that a motion for enforcement of decisions within five days of its submission. However, previous work has shown certain shortcomings in the work of public enforcement, which certainly do not want to diminish the current positive effect in their work.
Although the Law on Enforcement and Security requires that the writ of execution must be submitted to the execution debtor, it often happens that the judgment debtor with locked account for settlement of claims, finds out these informationonly when his account is already blocked. Also, because of ignorance and unawareness, executive debtors often execute immediately the imposed obligation, which is perhaps no basis even though they have the possibility of complaint. We have more such examples in recent times. Article 47 of the Law on Enforcement and Security says that the writ of execution, ruling dismissing or rejecting the proposal for enforcement may be filled within five days from the date of its receipt. Complaints must be submitted to the court or the public executor who decided on the proposal for execution. Public executor is obliged to submit the case file to the court, within five days to decide on the objection. Please note that the reasons for filling the complaints are as followed:
1) a court or public performer who brought a writ of execution is not competent; 2) documents on the basis of which the execution is assigned doesn’t have executive title; 3) decisions on the basis of which the execution is assigned is not executable; 4) decision on the basis of which is determined by the execution was canceled, revoked or modified; 5) settlement on the basis of which the execution is assigned annulled; 6) deadline for the settlement of claims has not passed or not the condition is determined by the settlement; 7) execution is determined at things, payment claims and other rights that are exempt from execution or where the possibility of execution is limited; 8) the claim is terminated on the basis of facts that occurred after the enforceability of the decision, or before that, but at the time when the execution debtor could not be highlighted in the proceeding that encourages executive document, or if the credit is abolished based on the fact that occurred after the concluded settlement 9) judgment creditor postponed the fulfillment of obligations for the time that has not yet expired; 10) the time-limit in which, in accordance with the law, it may propose execution; 11) the claim is not transferred to the enforcement creditor or the obligation is not transferred to the judgment debtor.
Also, the public enforcers in practice make another failure to comply with the Act. Throughout releases in the media, the public enforcers continue to violate the law on the protection of personal data since they still deliver judgment debtor identification numbers, to which the Civic Alliance pointed, and as confirmed by the Agency for protection of personal data and the free access to information. The Chamber of bailiffs informed about everything as well.
We hereby invite the Chamber of bailiffs which, within their competence when it comes to control of the public executors work, the Ministry of Justice as main organization that closely monitors their work to apply the law without hesitation and revoke licenses to those Enforcement Officers who work opposite to the law. Although the Chamber has an obligation to control operation executor at least once a year, we invite them to step up their control and thus act preventively.
While this is one way of informing the citizens of this institute, which is still not sufficiently familiar within the citizens, we call on the Ministry of Justice and the Chamber of bailiffs to increase activities with informing citizens of their rights when public enforcers are in question. In order for the law to come to life, it must be respected to the end, and bailiffs must be the best examples.
Zoran Vujičić
CA, Program Coordinator for the rule of law
