Third-country insolvency no shield against EU account freeze

The Court of Justice held on 5 November 2026, in Case C-716/24 PonnerEuropaEuropa, that insolvency proceedings opened in a third country do not block a European Account Preservation Order, even where the Member State recognises that foreign insolvency under its own lawEuropa. The Fourth Chamber ruling, on a reference from the Oberlandesgericht Frankfurt am MainEuropa, also lowers the evidence bar for the account-information mechanismEuropa: a creditor need not point to a specific accountEuropa, and general circumstances showing strong economic links with the Member State concerned can sufficeEuropa.

EJ, domiciled in Germany, had obtained a final default judgment from the Landgericht Frankfurt am Main ordering DX, a Curaçao-incorporated online gambling operator, to repay EUR 57,364 plus costs and interest for online gambling losses. In May 2024 EJ applied for an account-information order concerning DX's alleged accounts in Cyprus together with preservation of those accounts, arguing that stakes flowed to DX through two Cypriot companies and that DX, a letterbox company, held no seizable assets in Curaçao. The court rejected the request. On appeal, EJ added that insolvency proceedings had been opened against DX in Curaçao on 10 June 2024, that the island's gambling operators were typically assetless letterboxes, and that DX was managed from Curaçao by a director shared with a Cyprus-seated company.

On the first question, the Court holds that Article 2(2)(c) of Regulation (EU) No 655/2014, read with recital 8, excludes from the regulation's scope only insolvency proceedings falling under Regulation 2015/848Europa, that is, proceedings listed in its Annex A for a Member StateEuropa. A Curaçao proceeding, from an overseas country and territory outside the Treaties' scope, is a third-country proceedingEuropa even if German law recognises it under Paragraph 343 of the InsolvenzordnungEuropa. Three reasons converge: the exclusion's purpose is to avoid interference with EU insolvency proceedings and their effectiveness, a concern not transposable to third-country proceedings; the regulation and Regulation 2015/848 rest on mutual trust and mutual recognition, which do not extend to third countriesEuropa; and uniform application would collapse if scope depended on each Member State's national recognition rulesEuropa, so that the same claim against the same debtor could be preserved in one Member State and refused in another. Article 46(1), referring procedural gaps to national law, is irrelevant to scope and to excluded questions such as recognitionEuropa.

On the second question, the Court holds that Article 14(1), first subparagraph, and Article 14(3) do not require the creditor to rely on specific circumstances indicating a concrete accountEuropa. The creditor must duly substantiate reasons to believe the debtor holds an account in the Member State of enforcementEuropa, and the examples in recital 20, such as working or holding property there, are only illustrativeEuropa. Strong economic links demonstrated in general terms count, for instance the presence in that Member State of the seat of a payment-services provider through which the creditor paid the debtor and which is also the debtor's subsidiary, or of an agency or branch of the debtor there.

For cross-border debt-enforcement and insolvency practitioners, the practical point is twofold: debtors cannot shield EU bank accounts from preservation by opening insolvency proceedings outside the Union, and creditors pursuing Cypriot, Maltese or other Member State accounts should plead the debtor's economic footprint, payment routing and corporate network rather than hunting for an IBAN first.

Its legal basis is Article 2(2)(c), Article 7(1) and Article 14(1), first subparagraph, and (3) of Regulation (EU) No 655/2014Europa.