May 2026 – Annulment of property auction due to abusive expediting of enforcement (Art. 281 of the Greek Civil Code)
Decision No. 1648/2026 of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens annulled an order to pay, an attachment, and the auction of property, finding that the expediting of enforcement was abusive (Art. 281 of the Civil Code).
Decision No. 1648/2026 of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens (Special Procedure for Property Disputes – Division for Objections against Enforcement) was recently issued. The court adjudicated the objection against enforcement brought by our clients (Article 933 of the Code of Civil Procedure), together with the additional grounds thereof, and upheld our legal remedies, annulling the contested order to pay and the report of compulsory attachment of real property that the respondent debt servicing company had expedited against them.
The enforcement was directed against our clients’ commercial property (a car parking facility) and was based on payment order No. 8861/2025. Specifically, the disputed debt arose from a loan agreement of 2006 (in the amount of €2,000,000, subsequently converted into Swiss francs), for the servicing of which a prenotation of mortgage had been registered on the aforementioned commercial property. For several years, and already since 2023, our clients were in continuous negotiations with the respondent, in order to sell the property to an interested buyer and to repay the debt through the proceeds. In this context, the respondent had issued successive declarations of intent to lift the prenotation. However, when a specific buyer was found, the respondent set as a condition of its declaration the payment of an advance of €500,000 within just 11 days – a timetable objectively impossible to meet, given the complexity of the transaction concerning a parking facility of many square meters – and refused to extend it. This refusal led to the withdrawal of the buyer and the failure of the sale. Moreover, despite the subsequent submission by our clients of a business plan with a specific settlement proposal, the respondent never responded and proceeded to obtain a payment order, to serve an order to pay, and subsequently to attach the property.
The Court upheld our first additional ground of objection, ruling that the respondent’s aforementioned conduct was abusive within the meaning of Article 281 of the Civil Code. As it ruled, the unjustified refusal to extend the timetable – when it had already issued three declarations of intent to lift the prenotation, a buyer had been found, and the completion of the sale would have yielded an amount of at least €1,900,000 toward repayment of the debt – combined with the failure to respond to our clients’ final attempt and the choice to commence compulsory enforcement, manifestly exceeded the limits of good faith and the socioeconomic purpose of the right to expedite compulsory enforcement. The Court further noted that the choice of attachment does not unquestionably lead to a swift and successful conduct of an auction, but entails the risk of a reduction in the opening bid price, in contrast to the certain and higher recovery that would result from the sale. Accordingly, and without it being necessary to examine the remaining grounds, the Court annulled both the order to pay dated 16.07.2025 and the report of compulsory attachment No. 2998/14.10.2025, ordering the respondent to pay our clients’ legal costs.
In this way, the compulsory enforcement against their property was halted, while the decision serves as a reminder that the right of the creditor (or the debt servicer) to expedite enforcement is not unlimited: its exercise is subject to review for good faith, particularly where the debtor has demonstrated a consistent intention to repay through a solution that is both suitable and more beneficial for all parties involved.
Relevant theoretical analysis can also be found here.