AUSTRIA Law and Practice Contributed by: Bettina Knoetzl, Patrizia Netal, Katrin Hanschitz and Natascha Tunkel, KNOETZL
If the conditions for enforcement are no longer met, the enforcement may be discontinued (or limited) upon application or ex officio. 2.6 Unenforceable Domestic Judgments A constitutive judgment does not require enforcement. A declaratory judgment can be relied upon but cannot be enforced (see 2.1 Types of Domestic Judgments ). 2.7 Register of Domestic Judgments In Austria, judgments are not freely accessible to the public. There is no central repository of judgments but there is an online register of judgments, which pub - lishes a selection of judgments of the (mostly higher) Austrian courts in anonymous form. As regards enforcement proceedings specifically, it is possible to access the Enforcement Register, which contains court data regarding enforcement proceed - ings conducted against a debtor, including the num - ber of pending enforcement proceedings. The entries relate to enforcement proceedings conducted within the preceding two years. As the published selection of judgments appears only in anonymised form, there is no personal entry that a judgment debtor who has paid would need to have removed. As regards the Enforcement Register, the entries relate to enforcement proceedings conduct - ed within the preceding two years and are deleted automatically upon expiry of that statutory retention period, so that a judgment debtor cannot compel their earlier removal. Where the debtor has satisfied the claim, the enforcement proceedings are discontinued and recorded as terminated, and the corresponding information ceases to be displayed once the retention period has lapsed. 3. Foreign Judgments 3.1 Legal Issues Concerning Enforcement of Foreign Judgments The main difference between the enforcement of domestic and foreign judgments is the need, in prin - ciple, to first obtain a declaration of recognition and enforceability of a foreign judgment. Once this pre - requisite is fulfilled, the same provisions apply to the
enforcement proceedings and no further differentia - tion from domestic judgments is made. From the perspective of the Austrian enforcement courts, there are two main groups of foreign judg - ments: • judgments rendered by courts of EU member states (including Denmark) and Lugano Convention parties, which do not require separate recognition proceedings; and • judgments rendered by courts of other states, which require recognition proceedings. The general rule under Austrian law (Section 406 of the EA) is that, if no treaties apply, foreign judgments will only be recognised and declared enforceable if: • they are enforceable in the state of origin (a certifi - cation of enforceability must be provided); and • “formal reciprocity” has been agreed in internation - al treaties or determined by an Austrian regulation – exceptions apply in family law and with regard to civil/marital status, and formal reciprocity requires that Austrian judgments are, in practice, not treated any differently to judgments of that state. In cases where the respective treaties do not already contain special rules on recognition requirements (this includes the international transportation treaties in particular), Austrian law further requires that: • hypothetically applying Austrian rules on jurisdic - tion, the court of origin had international jurisdic - tion; • the statement of claim (or writ or other document initiating the proceedings) was duly served on the defendant(s) under the laws applying in the state of origin; and • no grounds for refusal of recognition/enforceability exist (Section 407 of the EA). 3.2 Variations in Approach to Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Differentiation According to Country of Origin Within EU member states, Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 of 12 December 2012 on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in
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