Reforms in sphere of compulsory enforcement for citizens’ benefit

The draft legislative package for reforms in the sphere of compulsory enforcement — submitted by Minister of Justice Artak Zeynalyan during today's session of the Government — has been approved by the executive body.

The Minister informed that, upon adoption of the Law "On compulsory enforcement of judicial acts" in 1998, the legal system of Armenia has undergone many institutional changes, as a result of which the Law has a number of flaws and contradictions and does not comply with the practice established based on the decisions of the Constitutional Court, the Court of Cassation and the ECHR, and due to those legal gaps, the Compulsory Enforcement Service faces many practical problems.

According to Minister Zeynalyan, the submitted package has provided for the main solutions that concern the creation of the possibility to appeal rejection of the application on issuing a writ of execution, the introduction of mechanisms contributing to voluntary enforcement of a judicial act in the process of issuing a writ of execution, giving preference to electronic notification in regard to notifications, etc.

In particular:

1.     Currently, when creditors submit an application on issuance of a writ of execution to the court, courts reject issuance of the writ of execution with a letter, but persons do not have the opportunity to appeal such letters of the court. To solve this issue, regulations for rejecting an application on issuance of a writ of execution have been established and it has been provided that rejection of an application on issuance of a writ of execution is subject to appeal.

2.     A mechanism contributing to voluntary enforcement of a judicial act in the process of issuing a writ of execution has been established; based on the mechanism, a citizen will have another opportunity to execute the judicial act without intervention of a compulsory enforcement officer and not bear the burden of costs.

3.     Regulations for notification have been revised; according to those regulations, the main priority has been given to electronic notification. This envisages reducing the funds spent on postal deliveries [1] and making notifications faster and more efficient.

4.     Regulations have been established; according to those regulations, if a debtor partially fulfils his or her obligation or if the attachment obviously does not correspond to the size of the obligation, the compulsory enforcement officer shall lift the attachment in the relevant size. This means that legal bases are finally being created to provide the opportunity to eliminate unnecessary inconveniences for our citizens.

5.     To raise the level of efficiency of enforcement proceedings, it was been established that a debtor is obliged to submit a new declaration in case of acquiring new property. Besides, if the debtor has property subject to registration or record-registration in his or her name, but that property is not registered or record-registered, a compulsory enforcement officer, as the representative of the debtor, must organise the registration and
record-registration of the property. This provision will contribute to enforcement of the writs of execution of property nature, as it will provide the opportunity to identify additional properties and levy charges on them.

6.     The list of properties not subject to levy of execution has been expanded, and this list includes the equipment envisaged for disabled persons, for pets and birds that are not a subject of entrepreneurial activity, as well as property and other funds provided as social assistance.

7.     With the purpose of reducing circulation of documents and the costs arising from reduction, grounds have been created to introduce electronic systems of circulation of documents between the Compulsory Enforcement Service and other bodies upon the decisions of the Government in the future and to ensure that the inquiries of compulsory enforcement officers to different bodies and the responses to those inquiries are made and given electronically.

At the same time, taking into consideration the fact that the mentioned issues require urgent solutions, the package of draft laws was recognised as exigent.