At the session held on July 18, 2023, the Assembly of the Republic of North Macedonia passed and adopted the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Obligation Relations and the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Execution. The enacted Laws amending and supplementing the Law on Obligation Relations and the Law amending and supplementing the Law on Execution were published in the Official Gazette of the Republic of North Macedonia no. 154 of July 20, 2023 and entered into force on the day of publication in the official gazette.
With the adopted amendments and additions to the Law on Obligation Relations, Article 266-a is supplemented with a new paragraph 8, which stipulates the following: “When the amount of the due and penal interest reaches the amount of the principal, the interest stops flowing.”
This legal solution is translated into the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Execution, where it is provided that in Article 18, paragraph (1), the words are added: “that is, until the moment when the unpaid interest reaches the amount of the principal debt.”
This legal solution foresees the upper threshold for the collection of interest on the amount of due and unpaid principal, whereby the legislator provided that the amount of unpaid penal interest stops flowing when it reaches the amount of the principal.
In addition to the mentioned amendment, Article 2 of the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Obligation Relations also foresees an amendment to Article 368 of the Law on Obligation Relations regarding the statute of limitations of claims. The new amended article 368 reads:
“(1) All claims that have been established by a final court decision or by a decision of another competent authority or by settlement before a court or before another competent authority shall expire in five years, from the moment of their execution, as well as the claims for which in accordance with the law provides for a shorter statute of limitations.
(2) All occasional claims, which result from decisions or settlements provided for in paragraph (1) of this article and are due in the future, expire within the period provided for the statute of limitations of occasional claims.
(3) The statute of limitations of a final court decision or by a decision of another competent authority, or by settlement before a court or before another competent authority, is terminated by submitting a request for execution before a competent executor, whereupon the statute of limitations begins to run again, which in the enforcement procedure lasts for ten years from the moment of the submitted request for enforcement.”
The greatest controversy and contradiction of this legal solution is Article 4 of the adopted Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Obligation Relations, where it is stipulated that “Initiated procedures for collection of claims provided for in Article 2 of this Law shall be completed in accordance with this Law.”
We believe that such legal solutions provided for in the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Obligation Relations and the Law on Amendments and Supplements to the Law on Execution are inconsistent and detrimental to the interests of creditors, as they limit the amount of penal interest that creditors can claim. collect, shortens the limitation period for initiating enforcement procedures by the creditors themselves, as well as limits the period in which enforcement can be carried out, thus providing protection and a privileged position to debtors.
Comparing the legal solutions in other legal solutions indicate that the statute of limitations for enforcement procedures is 20 or even 30 years, hence it is unclear why the law provided for a shortening of the statute of limitations for the enforcement procedure from 10 years from the moment of the request for enforcement.
Let us conclude that you want to solve them in contradiction with the Constitution of the Republic of North Macedonia, which provides for the freedom of the Republic of North Macedonia, which stipulates that the Republic provides equal legal status to all subjects of all, while the freedom of all and entrepreneurship can be. limited by law only to the defense of the Republic, the preservation of nature, the environment or people’s animals.
With the amendments to the laws, the equal position between debtors and creditors is violated, and characteristic creditors are placed in a much worse position if it is taken into account that retroactive effect of the passed Enforcement Law is foreseen, and it is determined that already started procedures will be worked on. for the collection of claims.