July 2025 – Annulment of Payment Orders and Auction

Issuance of Decision No. 303/2025 of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Chania – Annulment of the auction of a property valued at €143,000.00 due to the annulment of the payment orders and the enforcement report based thereon.

Recently, Decision No. 303/2025 was issued by the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Chania, which jointly adjudicated the objections filed by our clients against the payment orders issued against them, as well as against the enforced seizure imposed on their primary (and sole) residence. The Court examined these legal remedies together and issued a unified ruling, accepting all of our objections in full.

Specifically, the Court upheld our additional ground of objection, in which we argued the invalidity of the contested paymen

t orders and, consequently, the invalidity of the enforcement process (auction) that had been initiated based on an invalid enforceable title. The procedural inadmissibility arose from the fact that the documents submitted by the opposing party (the loan management company) to prove its claims — particularly the supplemental agreements to our clients’ loan contracts — were not properly certified copies of the originals. As such, the contested payment orders were issued without meeting the necessary requirements for written proof of the creditor’s claims. In particular, the Court held that: “The respondent submitted poorly printed and illegible photocopies of the aforementioned contractual documents (loan agreement and its supplemental agreements), which bear no official certification. They are not even bound as separate and identifiable documents but are presented as loose pages mixed with various copies of bank transaction receipts. As a result, it is not adequately proven that the contested payment order was issued based on lawfully certified documents […]” Furthermore, the judgment states: “If the claim or its amount is not proven in writing, the judge must, pursuant to Article 628 of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure (CCP), refrain from issuing a payment order. If, despite the absence of this procedural requirement, a payment order is issued, it shall be annulled upon objection by the debtor under Articles 632 and 633 CCP. The annulment of the payment order on this ground is declared due to procedural inadmissibility, regardless of whether the claim may be proven by other means.”

It is worth noting that, although further examination of the remaining objections was unnecessary, the Court also gave particular consideration to other arguments we raised. These included: (i) the vagueness of the contested payment orders and the unquantified nature of the alleged claim, due to the inability to determine the amount of default interest; and (ii) the lack of a certain and liquidated claim, due to the invalidity of the contractual clause stipulating interest calculation based on a 360-day year. This clause, unlawfully included in one of the contested loan agreements, misleads the consumer-borrower and clearly violates the principle of transparency, which requires that contractual terms be drafted in a clear, specific, and comprehensible manner. The Court (although not required) also found these objections to be legally and substantively well-founded. As a result, our clients were vindicated after being subjected to months of legal pursuit by the loan management company, which had blatantly disregarded their repeated efforts to settle the debt, instead initiating enforcement proceedings and seeking to auction their only home in a clearly coercive and abusive manner. However, pursuant to the above decision, all enforcement proceedings against their property have ceased, as both the seizure report that initiated the auction and the enforceable titles (payment orders) purported to justify the auction were annulled.