Debt Collection in Europe: 27 Systems, One Strategy
Debt Collection in Europe Isn't Getting Harder — It's Getting Faster
The conventional wisdom goes like this: European debt collection is a regulatory maze, every country has different rules, and cross-border recovery is slow, expensive, and uncertain. If you read most industry commentary, you'd believe the European market is becoming more difficult for creditors every year.
That narrative is wrong. Or more precisely, it's 10 years out of date.
Since 2017, the EU has systematically dismantled the barriers that made cross-border debt collection painful. The European Account Preservation Order (EAPO) — which lets you freeze a debtor's bank account in another EU country without their knowledge — became operational. The Brussels I Regulation (recast) eliminated exequatur requirements, meaning a judgment obtained in one member state is directly enforceable in another. The European Payment Order has been streamlined. Digital filing is expanding.
The result? Cross-border enforcement within the EU is now faster than domestic enforcement in several member states. Getting a German judgment enforced in the Netherlands takes 2-4 weeks. Getting a domestic judgment enforced in Italy's Tribunale system can take 6 months.
If you're still treating European debt collection as a country-by-country problem, you're using a 2015 map for a 2025 landscape.
The Speed Gap Nobody Talks About
Here's a comparison that should reframe how you think about European receivables. These are average timelines from formal demand to enforceable order, based on our case data across 25+ years:
Germany (Mahnverfahren): 4-6 weeks for an uncontested payment order. Court fees start at €36 for claims under €5,000. Fully automated — filed electronically, processed by the Amtsgericht Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt for all of Germany. If the debtor doesn't object within 14 days, you have an enforceable title.
France (Injonction de Payer): 2-6 weeks. Filed at the Tribunal de Commerce for commercial claims. No oral hearing required for the initial order. Court fees scale with claim value but remain modest.
Netherlands (Dagvaarding): 6-10 weeks. Requires formal service by a deurwaarder (bailiff), which adds a step but also adds pressure — a bailiff showing up signals serious intent.
Spain (Monitorio): 4-8 weeks for uncontested claims under €250,000. No lawyer required for claims under €2,000. Spain's monitorio procedure is one of Europe's most creditor-friendly mechanisms — and one of its least known internationally.
Italy (Decreto Ingiuntivo): 2-6 weeks for the initial order. Ex parte — the debtor isn't notified until after the judge issues the order. If unopposed within 40 days, immediately enforceable.
Compare those timelines to a typical US commercial lawsuit (6-18 months to judgment) or UK County Court proceedings (8-20 weeks), and European commercial debt recovery starts to look remarkably efficient — if you use the right mechanism in the right jurisdiction.
The Real Problem: Not Law, But Lag
In our experience, the primary obstacle to European debt recovery isn't legal complexity. It's delay. The average European commercial invoice is sent to collections at 8-11 months overdue. By that point, the creditor has typically exhausted internal follow-up, the debtor relationship has deteriorated, and the recovery probability has dropped by 25-35%.
The companies that recover European debt most effectively aren't the ones with the biggest legal budgets. They're the ones that escalate at 60-90 days overdue — while the debtor still cares about the relationship, while their financial position is still visible, and while the legal mechanisms work fastest.
Every European jurisdiction has a sweet spot: the window where formal collection pressure produces results without requiring court involvement. In Germany, it's 30-60 days overdue. In Italy, it's 60-90 days. In Spain, it's 45-75 days. Miss that window and you're not just paying more for collection — you're fundamentally changing what kind of collection is possible.
The Limitation Periods That Catch International Creditors
Statute of limitations is the silent killer in European debt collection. Most creditors assume they have years. They do — but the variation across Europe is dramatic, and the wrong assumption can permanently extinguish your claim:
3 years: Germany, France, Belgium, Netherlands (for commercial claims). 5 years: UK, Ireland, Spain (general commercial). 6 years: UK (contractual claims), Switzerland (general). 10 years: Italy, Portugal, Austria (general civil).
The dangerous detail: these periods start from different trigger points in different jurisdictions. In Germany, the 3-year period begins at the end of the calendar year in which the claim arose — meaning a claim from March 2022 prescribes on December 31, 2025, not March 2025. In France, the period runs from the day the creditor knew or should have known of their right to claim. In Italy, it runs from the due date of the payment.
If you have receivables across multiple European countries, a single statute-of-limitations policy is a liability. Each jurisdiction needs its own trigger date tracked independently.
EU Instruments Most Businesses Don't Use
Three EU-level mechanisms exist specifically to simplify cross-border commercial debt recovery. Together, they handle the majority of routine cross-border claims. Separately, they're almost unknown outside specialist circles:
European Payment Order (Regulation 1896/2006): For uncontested cross-border claims of any value. File in your home court. Standard forms. No lawyer technically required (though advisable for claims above €25,000). If the debtor doesn't oppose within 30 days, the order is enforceable across all EU member states.
European Small Claims Procedure (Regulation 861/2007): For cross-border claims under €5,000. Written procedure. Judgment enforceable EU-wide without any intermediate step.
European Account Preservation Order (Regulation 655/2014): The most powerful tool most businesses haven't heard of. Lets you freeze a debtor's bank accounts in another EU member state before or during proceedings — without alerting the debtor first. Prevents asset flight. Available in urgent cases where there's a risk that enforcement of the eventual judgment would be impossible without it.
These aren't theoretical instruments. We use them routinely. The EPO alone accounts for roughly 15% of our EU cross-border case resolutions.
The Technology Shift That Changes Everything
European debt collection is undergoing a structural transformation that most industry commentary either ignores or buries under buzzwords. The practical impact is this: digital court filing, electronic service of process, and automated payment order systems are collapsing timelines that used to stretch for months.
Germany's Mahnverfahren has been fully electronic since 2012. France is rolling out digital filing across its Tribunaux de Commerce. Spain's LexNET system enables electronic case management. The Netherlands' Rechtspraak.nl platform handles digital submissions.
For creditors, this means two things. First, the administrative cost of pursuing European claims has dropped substantially — you no longer need a local lawyer to physically file papers at a courthouse. Second, the speed advantage of acting early has increased — because the machinery processes fast, the bottleneck is now entirely on the creditor's side: how quickly do you escalate?
What Smart Creditors Do Differently
The businesses that consistently recover European debt share three habits:
They escalate early. Not at 12 months. Not at 6 months. At 60-90 days, while the legal mechanisms are fastest and the debtor's attention is still available.
They use local expertise. A demand letter from London, in English, citing UK law, to a debtor in Milan achieves functionally nothing. A formal Messa in Mora from a Milan PEC address, in Italian, citing Articles 1219 and 1224 of the Codice Civile, gets a response within 15 days roughly 40% of the time.
They know the EU toolkit. The EPO, ESCP, and EAPO exist to make cross-border recovery faster and cheaper than domestic alternatives. Businesses that use them recover more, faster, at lower cost.
European debt collection in 2025 is not the fragmented, slow, expensive process it was a decade ago. The legal infrastructure has improved. The technology has improved. The only variable that hasn't improved is how quickly creditors decide to act.
If you have European receivables aging past 90 days, the tools exist to recover them efficiently — but the window narrows with every week. Request a free European case assessment and we'll identify which mechanisms apply to each of your claims, in each jurisdiction, within 48 hours.
