Problems with notifications, with the location of assets, "supervening" insolvencies... Executing a sentence whose conviction is an obligation to pay becomes on many occasions an impossible undertaking. So much so that a study of Sigma Two for the General Council of Attorneys concluded that only one in four sentences is executed on time and properly. The other three either do it late or never do it, with what that implies for those who believe they have found redress in justice and come face to face with the bureaucracy of an extremely slow and inefficient system.
The truth is that the execution of sentences transcends the individual sphere to have an impact
full in the economy, because as a consequence of this battered –when it is not impossible– pilgrimage towards collection, close to ounce billion euros (10.742.892.000) are paralyzed. For the execution of that 25 percent of convictions, only 3.657 million euros have been obtained.
Economic impact for the delay – ABC
The figures that support this study, in which an average of 10.000 euros per pending sentence has been calculated, lead the prosecutors to request that their European colleagues be homologated, so that they are allowed to have a leading role in the execution phase of the sentence. In Spain, the court participates in this process (to which it is necessary to request that execution, importation, interest and costs), the judge (who will be the one who issues an order decreeing the execution) and the lawyer of the administration of justice, who issues the decree agreeing on the measures that have been requested. The implication of all these legal figures and the fact that the attorney has to request each of these steps makes the execution procedure become an obstacle course, it is slow and the execution time doubles or triples. As an example, Spain began 2019 with 1.915.742 sentences pending execution and throughout that year another 484.329 were added, according to data from the General Council of the Judiciary. Of the resolutions pending compliance, 60 percent are judgments of monetary execution, those with which the Civil Code refers to those that contemplate a payment.
The solicitors –representatives of the client before the courts– believe that their direct intervention in the enforcement process will help speed up the procedures. Not in vain do they represent the interests of an individual. No one is more interested than his client in that the payment required by the light judgment is carried out and that it goes as far as it takes to uncover a possible strategy of hiding the money or other tricks aimed at avoiding compliance with the ruling.
Lawyers who obtain convictions for their clients are accustomed to seeing the intimate difficulties of effectively serving the sentence for matters as seemingly trivial as a change of address –but which brings the execution back to the starting point– or for the bureaucratic labyrinth that supposes the location of the assets of the opponent.
In the tail of Europe
The truth is that for one reason or another, Spain is at the bottom of Europe in terms of execution of the conviction, as shown by the data from Sigma Dos, which has studied the behavior of the ten European countries with figures similar to that of the Spanish lawyer. These are Luxembourg, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Scotland, Greece, Lithuania, Hungary, Estonia, Portugal. In all of them, the attorney has executive functions to comply with the sentence, which includes actions such as notification to debtors, evaluation and decision of the measures to be applied to guarantee the collection of the debt or collection of actions such as embargoes or auctions.
In Spain, the term of execution of a sentence, that is to say, the time that elapses from the time it is issued until it is fulfilled, ranges between six months and one year. Only Greece is behind us, with a process that can take up to 15 months. In all other cases, the time is less. In Hungary, for example, the maximum payment term is 8 days. The same is true in Estonia and Lithuania. In Scotland, France and Luxembourg the execution becomes a range of between two and six months, which is the case in the last of these countries.
The greater or lesser agility in the execution of sentences depends a lot on the digital means available so that compliance reaches a successful conclusion in the shortest possible time. In this case, it is important to know that the first four countries with the shortest execution time (ie, Hungary, Estonia, Lithuania and Belgium) are precisely those with the greatest implementation of telematic and digital media.
Spain also loses out in this ranking because while in our country the prosecutor can only have access to records (data on those executed, the debtor's assets...), their European counterparts can communicate with banks, notify seizures of assets (Belgium, the Netherlands, Hungary or Estonia) or even carry out electronic auctions (the Netherlands, Hungary, Lithuania, Estonia or Portugal, a country in which its judicial agents have a tool that allows them to process all the steps of the enforcement procedure).
Estonia and Belgium, in the lead
The results are there. In a ranking of efficiency or success in the execution of the sentence, Estonia and Belgium are located as the countries with the best results in collection, being able to have executed up to 85 percent of the sentences; the following, with figures of around 60 percent, have France, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Lithuania. After Hungary, with 35 percent, and Spain penultimate, with 25 percent. Greece closes the ranking, with 10 percent of executed sentences.
The study presented this week to the president of the Attorney General of Spain, Juan Carlos Estévez, makes a projection of the economic flow that will be obtained if the Spanish system is more efficient than in the restoration of the countries of Europe. Just by equaling the success rate of the country that precedes us, Hungary, one million euros more would be obtained from the execution of sentences, eight and a half million if our percentage of success in obtaining collection was the same as that of Estonia.
