July 2026 – Annulment of payment order and of order to pay (writ of execution) for the sum of €245,000

By decision no. 117/2026 of the Single-Member First Instance Court of Samos (Special Procedure for Property Disputes), the objection (anakopi) we filed against a payment order and an order to pay directed against our clients was upheld. The claim concerned an alleged debt of a claims-acquisition company (to which the debt was purportedly transferred from the original creditor bank against them), arising from a credit agreement through an open current account (allilóchreos logariasmós), for a total amount (including the court costs for issuing the disputed payment order) of approximately €245,000.

By that decision, on the basis of the arguments we raised and proved, it was recognized that the Servicer company, which had proceeded to issue the disputed payment order and subsequently to serve the disputed order to pay, had not complied with the principle of documentary proof (archí tis éngrafis apódeixis), with the result that there was a procedural inadmissibility for its issuance.

More specifically, the above decision recognized that the Servicer company failed to identify in any way the disputed claim, for which it supposedly initiated the process of issuing the disputed payment order and proceeded to serve the disputed order to pay, and therefore also failed to prove its purported active legitimation (standing / energitikí nomimopoíisi) to carry out such acts.

In more detail, the decision states the following:

“From the Summary of the Business Claims Servicing Agreement, as duly registered in the public books of the Athens Pledge Registry (Enechyrofylakeío) under prot. no. 232/28-6-2021 (volume 12, serial no. 222), which contains a summary of the published essential content of the management agreement dated 25/6/2021 concluded between the special-purpose entity under the name «……………..» and the respondent, a société anonyme dedicated to the servicing of claims from loans and credits (AEDADP), it emerges that the claims to be serviced and the possible stage of non-servicing of each claim are not mentioned in the management agreement — elements which ought to have been stated in the section of the summary ‘(f) other essential terms’, given that, pursuant to Ministerial Decision 161337/30.10.2003, which introduced the template of the management-agreement summary form that management companies file with the competent pledge registries, no field is included for the identification of the claims. Nor does the agreement include a list (compare, by contrast, the sale and transfer agreement, to whose publication at the Athens Pledge Registry under prot. no. 380/20-9-2021 the claims for sale were attached in electronic form as an annex), nor is there any kind of reference or cross-reference to the claims mentioned in the aforesaid sale agreement, nor did any amendment/addition take place to remedy the above deficiency even after 20/9/2021, when the beneficiary of the claim acquired it from the banking company «……………..». Furthermore, the above omission constitutes a failure to observe the legal constitutive form as regards the essential minimum content of the servicing agreement, to which Article 2 of Law 4354/2015 is directly applicable. Paragraph 2 thereof provides that the agreement assigning servicing to the EDADP (Companies for the Management of Claims from Loans and Credits) is subject to a constitutive written form and includes, as minimum content: (a) the claims to be serviced and the possible stage of non-servicing of each claim, (b) the management acts, and (c) the management fee payable — given that the said provision applies to this servicing agreement, since it took place before 30/12/2023 (Article 41 of Law 5072/2023, as amended and in force). Specifically, although the transfer of the claim at issue took place by way of securitization under Article 10 para. 1 of Law 3156/2003, and for its servicing the parties invoked para. 14 of Article 10 of Law 3156/2003, nevertheless the respondent is an AEDADP established on the basis of Law 4354/2015, as it itself, moreover, admits, both in the application for the issuance of the challenged payment order and in the introductory part of the written pleadings dated 6/5/2026 filed before this Court. Therefore, in order for the said company to have the procedural capacity to file applications for the issuance of payment orders, as here, and to pursue compulsory enforcement pursuant to and by invoking para. 4 of Article 2 of Law 4354/2015, the conditions of the entire article must be satisfied, including para. 2 of that same article. This is required by legal certainty, which mandates the application of Article 2 of Law 4354/2015 both in cases where the servicing of claims has been undertaken on the basis of the provisions of Article 10 para. 14 of Law 3156/2003 and where it has been undertaken on the basis of the provisions of Law 4354/2015 (Plenary Session of the Supreme Court [OlAP] 1/2023), as well as by the security of transactions, since the borrower must know at all times both the identity of the creditor of the claim and the identity of the Servicer established in Greece who may collect it, even by compulsory means — information that is equally (or even more) important. Moreover, the reason for which a minimum content of the Servicing agreement is established — consisting, according to the explanatory report of the law, in the protection of small borrowers — and for which, in that context, the mention of, among other things, the claims to be servicerd is imposed, evidently applies to every case of assignment of servicing, whether or not it is accompanied by transfer of the claim. It must be noted at this point that, as is clearly stated in the explanatory report of the law, ‘The Servicing agreements are subject to a preventive review by the Bank of Greece before they take effect. It is noted, however, that this review does not substitute for judicial judgment’ (see Single-Member First Instance Court of Athens 936/2023, NOMOS legal database). In light of the above, and given that the claim at issue is not identified in any way in the aforesaid Servicing agreement, the latter is not capable of proving the respondent’s active legitimation for the issuance of the challenged payment order and the challenged writ of execution, and therefore they must be annulled due to the absence of a procedural precondition for the issuance of the challenged payment order.”