February 2025

Decision of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens Annuling a Property Seizure and Auction Due to a Non-Existent Enforceable Title

Recently, Decision No. 480/2025 of the Single-Member Court of First Instance of Athens was issued, which upheld our client’s objection (ανακοπή) and annulled the Enforcement Seizure Report on his property. Subsequently, by Decision No. 481/2025 of the same Court, the initiated auction was also annulled, given that the earlier decision—which concerns a prior stage of the enforcement procedure and invalidates a previous act of compulsory enforcement—has an immediate nullifying effect. Moreover, the declared nullity dates back to the moment the seizure was carried out, thereby undermining the validity of subsequent enforcement actions, namely in this instance, the auction.

In this particular case, compulsory enforcement took place—leading to the auction of our client’s property—based on an enforceable title in the form of an interim relief decision (απόφαση ασφαλιστικών μέτρων) ordering the restoration of the status quo ante. Execution, and ultimately the auction, were carried out on the basis of this “restoration.” Notably, this interim relief decision ordered such restoration even though the only relief sought was the suspension of enforceability under Article 632 of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure (ΚΠολΔ).

The Court hearing the Objection held that this purported enforceable title was non-existent under Article 313(1)(b) of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure, on the grounds that the interim relief court ordered a measure not provided for by the Code of Civil Procedure, thereby clearly exceeding the jurisdiction granted to it by law and imposing a legal consequence not within its purview as a civil court. Specifically, that decision included the following crucial observations:

“…the civil courts have jurisdiction to grant provisional legal protection in the form of interim measures only for those matters falling within Article 1 of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure, but this jurisdiction must necessarily align with the interim measures permitted by the Code of Civil Procedure. Therefore, a decision that orders a measure unknown to the Code, relative to the right to be secured, amounts to an excess of the civil courts’ jurisdiction. Such a decision falls under Article 313(1)(b)—which also applies to interim relief decisions—and must therefore be considered automatically null and void. […] If compulsory enforcement is pursued on the basis of a non-existent decision, it is challenged by means of an objection under Article 933 of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure…”

Based on that reasoning, and having deemed the enforceable title non-existent, the Court went on to annul the acts of compulsory enforcement—namely, the seizure and the auction.

As we had argued in our pleading (on the basis of which the aforementioned decision was issued):

“Specifically, the interim relief decision, by presuming the merits of the above objection filed by the opposing party, suspended the enforcement being carried out pursuant to the … Payment Order until the issuance of a ruling on the objection. It further ordered the restoration of the status quo ante by requiring me to return to the opposing party the sum of … euros, and ultimately imposed upon the latter my legal costs in the amount of €300. This constitutes a strikingly erroneous judicial assessment. Suffice it to note that the judge examining that application lacked the authority to order the restoration of the status quo ante. This is because restoring the status quo ante is legally tied to the success of ordinary legal remedies (see Articles 914, 550, 579 of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure) under the procedure those provisions specify, and requires the submission of a relevant petition by a party. Here, restoration was ordered in the context of an interim relief hearing, without any such request by the opposing party! In this instance, the opposing party sought only (a) suspension of the enforceability of Payment Order No. … and (b) suspension of enforcement of the Notice to Pay dated 14 February 2022. Nevertheless, the court—without any specific justification and acting as though it were a trial court in a main action—not only granted the requests for suspension but also arbitrarily (and, in any case, erroneously) ordered the restoration of the status quo ante, obliging me to pay the opposing party the amount I had collected pursuant to the third-party garnishment that had been imposed!”