Das niederländische Mahnverfahren unter Berücksichtigung der Mögchkeiten der elektronischen Mahnverfahrensdurchfhrung im Rahmen der verfahrensrechtlichen Garantien des Art. 6 Abs. 1 EMRK

Abstract

Late payment is a key aspect of insolvencies of small en mediumsized companies. In order to combat late payment, it is necessary not only to adjust the substantive but as well the procedural rules. As the Dutch Code civil procedure does not have a specific procedure to enforce the socalled undisputed money claims, these claims are enforced by the ordinary proceedings. These claims are characterized by the fact that the debtor has not paid his debt because he could not or he did not want to. With the introduction of the European order for payment procedure the creditor of a money claim gets a new possibility to enforce these claims in cross border cases. As this procedure is only applicable in cross border cases the question has to be raised whether the Dutch legislator is required to introduce such a procedure in the Netherlands. The order for payment procedure can, however, fulfill a further aim, as can be seen in the German and Austrian Mahnverfahren, namely the relieving of the judiciary in general and the judges in particular. This could be achieved by standardizing the procedure, making the use of forms obligatory, and electronic data processing. This dissertation focuses therefore on the question whether there is a need for the Dutch legislator to introduce a special procedure for the enforcement of undisputed money claims and how to form this procedure so that the use of electronic devises is possible. For this purpose a comparative overview is given of the current law regarding the enforcement of undisputed money claims in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria. Furthermore, the European order for payment procedure is being analyzed. Before he proposes a national Dutch procedure for the enforcement of undisputed moey claims, the author is focusing on possible frictions which can occure in the use of electronic data processing within civil litigation.