Act On Prevention Of Late Payments In Force Since 16 March 2011

The new act imposes statutory obligations on undertakings which fail to make payments on time, even for payments due before 16 March 2011.

Albeit pursuant to Directive 2011/7/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on combating late payment in commercial transactions, the Slovenian legislator's main objectives go beyond the directive in an aim to:

strengthen payment discipline and reduce payment delays by inter alia implementing (i) statutory maximum payment period lengths (30, 60 and 120 days); (ii) voidance of grossly unfair contractual provisions; (iii) a fixed sum of EUR 40 for recovery costs (prior to court enforcement proceeding); (iv) a debtor's duty to register its due monetary obligations (including those arising from bills of exchange) in compulsory multilateral set-off); publicise information on debtors that have not set their obligations arising out of bills of exchange on time (by establishing a register of bills of exchange protested for non-payment); sanction violators (penalties ranging from EUR 100 – 10,000 for an undertaking; EUR 50 – 5,000 for the responsible person within the undertaking). The scope of the Act is limited to payments made as remuneration for commercial transactions, i.e., delivery of...