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Description
According to data from the Register of Initiated Executions, tens of thousands of executions have been initiated against children and minors in the Czech Republic. The infamous rarity of child debts was to be solved by the expected amendment to the new Civil Code and Civil Procedure Code adopted last year. However, it is not retroactive and does not apply to "old" debts. Child debts continue to shake the foundations of the rule of law, which is why our work aims to stop debts issued to children before 2021, through individual legal representation, but especially by acting on the responsible institutions with the intention of stopping all child debts completely and across the board. This means that the focus of the project needs to change - instead of individual legal representation of clients, the emphasis will be on a top-down approach in the form of negotiations with responsible institutions. The project has several target groups: the general public will be informed about changes in the area of child debt, or changes in foreclosures, examples of good practice, etc., through the so-called action website. Another target group is public institutions such as municipalities and others that still practice debt recovery. The last target group is non-profit organisations and also clients of non-profit organisations - the debtors themselves. We expect that working with entities across the country will move us closer to our goal of stopping the issuance of all child debt by 2021.
Summary of project results
According to the data from the Register of Initiated Executions (hereinafter referred to as RZE) from the Ministry of Justice, there are still tens of thousands of executions initiated against children and young adults under the age of 18 in the Czech Republic. Some of them are justified (misdemeanours, crimes, etc.), but many of them are unjustified. What is more, it is shameful that the biggest generators of child debt are not private entities but public institutions. Municipalities, their contributory organisations, hospitals, etc. Changes have not been brought about by legislative changes, or new child foreclosures can no longer be created, but the amendment is not retroactive, so not only do old child foreclosures continue to run, be enforced or accrue interest, in the case of their individual settlement, the involvement of debt counsellors and lawyers is still required. Individual representation is a fundamental activity in the fight against obscene child foreclosures, but in the context of the above figures, the activity is economically and time-inefficient. Based on our experience to date, it has proven effective to target the public beneficiaries themselves and seek to instigate an ex officio stay of foreclosures. We are supported by the new regulation of the duties associated with due diligence in the law, which states that forgiveness of a debt to a person who was not of age at the time the debt was incurred is not considered a breach of duties associated with the management of property. However, before applying this wording, it is still necessary to take a step back and confront the public authorities with the fact that they are creditors at all in this matter.
The project has succeeded in stopping more than 200 child foreclosures across the board. In addition, an interactive map of child foreclosures was developed based on data obtained from the Register of Initiated Foreclosures of the Ministry of Justice. It was possible to establish cooperation with many municipalities that were listed as lenders of child foreclosures. Another output of the project is a website that publishes examples of good and bad practice in dealing with child foreclosures.
The impact of the project activities on those affected by foreclosures in the individual municipalities where foreclosures were stopped is clearly positive.
However, the project also emphasized the cultivation of the judicial space. Through the implementation of the project and very detailed work, we have found that there is no place or system to collect
data on children''s foreclosures, and so anonymised information had to be retrieved manually. Due to the fact that the Czech Republic is a rarity in Europe and is the only
country that for many years has not only ignored the creation of child debtors, but has even created them itself, the absence of such data, the lack of a uniform record-keeping guideline and the absence of enforcement
records, is trivial. At the same time, we have learned from the available, albeit inaccurate, data that there are a large number of child foreclosures that have already been sold to private entities,
where the likelihood of stopping child foreclosures across the board is very low given their economic interest.
Another important implication for further systemic solutions to stop child foreclosures is the finding that municipalities themselves often do not even know that they are conducting foreclosures. Many times we have
we have encountered the belief of municipal officials that they do not have any child foreclosures pending. Only after a detailed search using data from the Register of initiated executions and our methodological
support, the child executions were traced and subsequently stopped.