Last week the European Parliament was busy with many draft EU laws that could affect consumers in Europe. One of the not-mentioned here yet issues was the matter of cross-border debt recovery. At the moment, both small businesses and consumers may resign themselves to losing some money instead of pursuing often costly (hiring foreign lawyers), timely (translating documents) and complex (understanding different legal system) debt recovery procedures in another Member State (approx. 600 million euro a year in debt is due to such reasons written off). The European Commission proposed already in 2011 a Europe-wide preservation order to ease this debt recovery process (which we have in depth discussed: Cross-border debt recovery to be made easier for consumers and SMEs). Last week (finally) the European Parliament voted on it, and in June the proposal will be discussed in the Council. (European Commission welcomes progress on proposal to help recover cross-border debts)
