Chapter 9 Insolvency Registers

• Jurisdiction: United States

9. Insolvency Registers

The good functioning of cross-border insolvency proceedings relies on the exchange of information between insolvency practitioners, courts and creditors. In particular, a court opening insolvency proceedings needs to know whether the company is already subject to insolvency proceedings in another Member State. Under the EIR 2000, every Member State had its own insolvency registration system (sometimes not adequately working), and the inter-connectedness of these registers has not been ensured.

The EIR Recast has made considerable progress in this respect. According to Article 24 EIR Recast, Member States shall establish and maintain in their territory one or several registers in which information concerning insolvency proceedings is published ("insolvency registers"). That information shall be published as soon as possible after the opening of such proceedings. The Regulation determines the minimum amount of information to be published in the insolvency registers. It includes the date of the opening of insolvency proceedings, the court opening the insolvency proceedings, the type of insolvency proceeding (main, secondary or territorial), the debtor's name, the reregistration number, the registered office, and the name, postal address or email of the insolvency practitioner, etc.

Certain information on insolvency proceedings is of particular importance for creditors. A good example of such information is the time limits for lodging claims or for challenging decisions. The EIR Recast does not require Member States to calculate those time limits on a case-by-case basis. Member States should be able to fulfil their obligations by adding hyperlinks to the registers, where self-explanatory information on the criteria for calculating those time limits is provided (Recital 78 and Article 24(2)(h) EIR Recast).

Publicity of information regarding the opening of insolvency proceedings is crucial for creditors, both local and foreign, as they might be required by the lex concursus to file their claims within a prescribed period of time. Late filing may affect their ranking or otherwise negatively influence their position in the insolvency proceeding. While leaving it to the Member States to determine the exact filing period, Article 55(6) EIR Recast links the running of time for the lodging of foreign creditors' claims to the publication of the opening of insolvency proceedings in the insolvency register of the state of the opening of such insolvency proceedings.

9.1. Interconnection of Insolvency Registers

In Article 25 EIR Recast, the European Commission (EC) imposes a duty on itself to establish a decentralized system for the interconnection of insolvency registers. That system shall be composed of the national insolvency registers and the European e-Justice Portal, which shall serve as a central public electronic access point to information in the system. The system shall provide a search service in all the official languages of the institutions of the EU in order to make available the mandatory information and any other documents or information included in the insolvency registers that the Member States choose to make available through the European e-Justice Portal. By means of so-called implementing acts, the EC shall adopt technical specifications and standards for access and search of the described information by 26 June 2019.

Since summer 2014, the EC has already maintained an interconnection search interface, a functionality of the European e-Justice Portal at https://e-justice.europa.eu/content_insolvency_registers-110-en.do, which allows interested parties to search for insolvent entities, either natural or legal persons, within the EU. As of May 2018, it includes nine participating states, namely the Czech Republic, Italy, Austria, Germany, Latvia, Romania, Estonia, The Netherlands and Slovenia. By entering the debtor's name, one can search for the insolvency case throughout all 9...