Vienna: A judgment handed down by the Court of Justice on 21 May has reshaped the urgency yardstick that creditors must clear when seeking a European Account Preservation Order, opening the door to fresh argument over how far historic conduct of a debtor can colour an otherwise present-tense assessment. Case C-198/24, Mr Green, arose from an Austrian gambler’s attempt to recover stakes lost on an unlicensed online platform run by a Maltese operator, and turned ultimately on the interpretation of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 655/2014.
The factual backdrop is unusual but instructive. Austrian courts had, at the end of 2021, ordered the operator to refund the player on the ground that the gambling contract was void in the absence of a domestic licence. When the player sought to secure the award through a preservation order over the operator’s bank accounts in Malta, the operator argued that no urgent risk to recovery existed, because Maltese statute would in any event hinder enforcement and because the player had waited several years before applying. An Austrian court referred the question to Luxembourg.
The Court’s answer is nuanced. Urgency, the judges held, cannot be evaluated in a vacuum: where a national law in the debtor’s seat is itself capable of obstructing enforcement, that legal architecture is a factor the referring court may weigh. The same goes for prior conduct of the debtor pointing to a pattern of asset dissipation or non-cooperation in earlier proceedings. The chamber rejected the operator’s contention that historic behaviour falls outside the scope of Article 7, but emphasised that the assessment must remain proportionate and tied to a ‘real risk’ of frustration of the underlying claim.
Practitioners called the ruling the most consequential interpretation of the EAPO instrument since its entry into force. Cross-border debt-recovery specialists have long complained that national courts apply Article 7 with uneven rigour, with some refusing to look beyond the moment of the application and others taking a more forensic approach. By validating the wider lens, the Court has effectively tilted the framework in favour of creditors operating against defendants based in jurisdictions where local enforcement obstacles are well documented.
The fundamental-rights dimension runs deeper than the docket suggests. EAPO sits at the intersection of effective judicial protection under Article 47 of the Charter and the property and procedural-defence guarantees enjoyed by debtors. A wider urgency test expands the creditor’s reach but also increases the importance of the safeguards embedded in the regulation, including the obligation of security and the right of the debtor to seek revocation. Civil-liberties groups have welcomed the clarification while urging national courts to apply the proportionality limb with vigilance.
Operational consequences will start to bite at member-state level within weeks. Maltese, Cypriot and several Eastern European jurisdictions have already been the most common respondent states under EAPO applications, and the Mr Green reasoning will travel to any future case where local enforcement statutes are alleged to be obstructive. The Commission, which is due to issue a five-year evaluation of the regulation later in 2026, is now expected to draw on the judgment when assessing whether the urgency threshold needs any legislative recalibration. For the time being, creditors holding Austrian, German and Italian titles look likely to be the most immediate beneficiaries.
