The Law amending the Law on Enforcement and Security (Official Gazette of RS no. 54/2019) stipulates that, starting from 1 September 2020, public bidding for sale of immovable and movable assets in enforcement procedure may be organised exclusively in form of electronic public bidding.

This form of public bidding regulation was aimed at strengthening legal certainty through more transparent and more efficient procedure as well as prevention of possible abuse.

The Ministry of Justice adopted a Rulebook on organisation and procedure of electronic public bidding (Official Gazette of RS no. 14/2020, “Rulebook”), which regulated in more detail the organisation and procedure of electronic public bidding in enforcement procedure.

Portal of electronic public bidding

The Rulebook prescribes that electronic public bidding shall be realised through electronic public bidding portal e-Auction (available here).

For access to the portal, a registered user should have a software for reading qualified electronic signature and qualified electronic signature issued by an authorised certification authority.

The electronic bidding portal can be accessed through public and registered access.

1 ) If a user accedes the portal through public access, the following information are visible:

• for completed electronic bidding, the information on the subject of sale and highest bid offered;
• for ongoing electronic public biddings, the information on the subject of sale, starting price and current highest bid.

2 ) If a user registers, in addition to the information visible through public access, the overview of offered bids is also visible.

User registration

The Ministry of Justice published on its website the Instructions (available here) for using the e-Auction application.

These Instructions describe in detail the steps for using the application, starting from user registration and log-in by qualified electronic certificate to offering bids in the procedure of public electronic bidding.

The interested parties may create their own profile, pay membership fee, authorise another person for participating in public electronic bidding, verify the history of system log-in, as well as all ongoing public biddings, their wish list, browse public biddings by status, categories and tags.

Annual fee for application use is RSD 2,000.00 and for this amount the interested persons may participate in all electronic public biddings during a period of one year.

Participation in electronic public bidding

After registration on the electronic public bidding portal, a user submits electronic application for participating in a particular electronic public bidding and submits a proof of guarantee payment.

On the platform, public enforcement officers enter a series of important information stored in the database – on enforcement debtor and enforcement creditor, on persons subject to access prohibition, on persons relieved of guarantee payment, as well as information on surface of buildings, legal basis of acquisition, photographs or video recordings.

All bidders are anonymous, hence neither they nor public enforcement officers will know who is behind the identification number assigned for participation in public bidding.

The starting price is defined by conclusion on sale, it is visible on electronic public bidding portal and it represents a starting point for bidding procedure.

A bid is considered accepted when the portal of electronic public bidding notifies a bidder that the bid was registered as successfully offered and it is also the highest bid at that moment.

Current bids

From Monday, 21 September, a series of movables – mainly household items, have been offered for debt settlement in enforcement procedure.

The sale of first immovable assets will start on 25 September by e-auction of a commercial building, which will be followed by sale of other immovables such as residential buildings, farming land, cold storages and apartments.

This article is to be considered as exclusively informative, with no intention to provide legal advice.
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