Moratorium on Debt Recovery in the Context of Ensuring Property Interests of the State and Subjects of Private Law

Abstract

The content of moratorium on debt recovery as an element of state regulation of civil relations, which significantly affects the usual course of civil obligation, and its impact on ensuring interests of the state as the owner and other participants in civil relations is investigated. The relevance of the study is determined by the uniqueness of the national legal system, where a moratorium is becoming less the exception than the rule, can become a means to protect the interests of an entity, a group or a cluster of them, what, in turn, may encroach on the property status of creditors, including those who have exercised their right to judicial protection of the violated, unrecognized or disputed right. The author analyses the types of introduced moratoriums on debt recovery, including the extended classification criteria, regulatory consolidation, peculiarities of their application. It is stated that the introduction of moratoriums by the state is done not only and not so much for individual debtors who are unable to fulfill their obligations, but mainly due to imperfections of legislation in other areas (e.g. property management) or to prevent deterioration of socio-economic and political situation in the country in the result of instability in the property sphere provoked by economic crises and armed conflict (war) on the territory of Ukraine, which significantly affects the entire property sphere, especially of those individuals and legal entities related to the occupied and frontline territories. The need to revise the state policy on the application of moratoriums on debt recovery as a tool for regulating property relations and enforcement proceedings is accentuated. Emphasis is placed on the necessity for more detailed justification of the introduction and application, coercion, justification, real temporality of moratoriums on debt recovery, establishing a clear balance of creditor (debt collector) and debtor given the high interests of their introduction in order to respect constitutional and conventional human rights and fundamental freedoms on protection of property rights, the right to judicial protection, etc.