YARD Law Co. · Dispute Resolution & Enforcement · August 2026 · YARD Law Legal Team
A creditor does not always have to wait for a final judgment before protecting a claim.
Bulgarian civil procedure allows a court, where the statutory conditions are met, to order measures designed to prevent a future judgment from being worthless. It does not follow that every unpaid invoice justifies freezing a company's bank account, and the creditor who asks for one takes on a defined risk of its own.
Security for a claim already filed is governed by чл. 389 ГПК. Security for a claim not yet brought is governed by чл. 390 ГПК.
The second is the one that matters commercially, because it allows a creditor to act before the debtor knows litigation is coming.
The deadline is short and it is fixed by statute. Where security is granted for a future claim, the court sets the period within which the substantive claim must be brought, and under чл. 390, ал. 3 ГПК that period cannot exceed one month. If evidence that the claim has been brought is not presented, the court cancels the security of its own motion.
Two points about that period matter as much as its length, and both come from ТР № 6 от 14.03.2014 г. по тълк. д. № 6/2013 г., ОСГТК на ВКС.
When it starts. The period runs from the making of the order granting security, not from the date the applicant receives it. Чл. 395, ал. 2 ГПК requires the court to decide the application on the day it is filed, and the applicant is taken to know that day and to be expected to attend for a copy. Only where the court does not decide on the day of filing does the period instead run from service of the order.
The practical consequence is uncomfortable and it catches people out. Where the court does decide the same day, the month can be running while the applicant is still waiting to hear anything. The date to diarise is the date of the order, not the date the copy arrives.
How compliance is proved. The applicant must place evidence before the security court itself: a copy of the statement of claim bearing the date it was lodged, or a court certificate to the same effect. The security court has no duty to check of its own motion whether the claim was brought in time; its check is limited to whether that evidence is on the file. The one qualification is that the court will not cancel the security where the timely filing is officially known to it - which in practice means where the claim went to the same panel and that panel has already ruled on its admissibility and regularity.
Producing the evidence for the first time on appeal against the cancellation order will not ordinarily save the security. The appellate court reverses only where the appellant shows it had complied and the security court wrongly disregarded what was there.
Missing the date therefore does not merely delay matters. It removes the security and leaves the creditor having warned the debtor for nothing.
This test is frequently described inaccurately, including in English-language material, so it is worth setting out as the statute frames it.
A security need is a statutory condition: without the measure it must be impossible or significantly harder for the claimant to realise the rights established by the judgment.
How that need is established for a monetary claim is currently unsettled. Bulgarian practice has not been uniform on whether чл. 391 effectively presumes a security need in money claims or requires an individual assessment of the risk to enforcement in each case, and that precise question is before the Supreme Court of Cassation in Interpretative Case No. 4/2026 of the General Assembly of the Civil and Commercial Divisions. A creditor should therefore expect the point to be argued, and should not assume either that the need is automatic or that a concrete asset-flight scenario must be evidenced in every file.
As to the claim itself, чл. 391 ГПК provides alternatives rather than a single cumulative requirement. Security may be granted where the claim is supported by convincing written evidence, or where the applicant provides a guarantee in the amount the court determines. The court may also require a guarantee even where convincing written evidence exists.
A creditor without sufficiently convincing written evidence is therefore not necessarily excluded, because the guarantee route is an alternative. The guarantee does not, however, cure defects in the claim itself, make an inadmissible claim admissible, or make an unsuitable or disproportionate measure permissible. What it does is answer the applicant's potential liability if the security turns out to have been unjustified, and it has to be available before the order issues.
The measures under чл. 397 ГПК include a prohibition against disposal registered over real estate, attachment of movable property and of receivables, and other appropriate measures the court may order.
For a monetary claim, attachment of bank accounts and of receivables from third parties is usually the most effective.
A prohibition registered over real estate works differently from how it is usually described, and the difference matters. It does not legally prevent the debtor from transferring the property. Under чл. 401 ГПК a възбрана imposed as a securing measure produces the effects provided for in чл. 451 to чл. 453 ГПК: a disposition made after it is registered is ineffective as against the creditor, and transfers and rights in rem not registered before it cannot be set up against that creditor. The asset is held in place for enforcement purposes rather than frozen in the debtor's hands.
In practice the registered encumbrance also makes an ordinary market sale substantially harder, because it appears on the property file and few buyers or lenders will proceed over it. But "the property cannot be sold" is a description of the commercial reality, not of the legal effect, and the two come apart in exactly the cases where it matters.
The most aggressive looking measure is not always the right one. Freezing an empty account preserves nothing while still tying up the creditor's guarantee and generating enforcement costs.
That makes asset information the starting point rather than an afterthought. Available public property, corporate and pledge information and the debtor's own filings should be checked before the application is drafted.
One point here is counterintuitive and worth knowing. Under ТР № 6/2013, ОСГТК на ВКС, whether the property belongs to the defendant is not a precondition for granting a prohibition or an attachment. The security court does not investigate title, and a creditor is not required to prove that the debtor owns what it wants secured. But the measure is registered against the defendant's personal file, so if the property is in fact someone else's, the registration produces no effect against the true owner. You can obtain the measure without proving ownership; you simply get nothing for it.
It is also worth being realistic about the limits of what can be found. There is no public register a creditor can search by company number to see every vehicle or every account a debtor holds. Some asset categories only become efficiently traceable once enforcement powers are engaged, which is an argument for targeting the measures you can evidence rather than applying broadly and hoping.
The procedure is designed to be fast and it is not adversarial at this stage. Under чл. 395 ГПК no copy of the application is served on the debtor and the court considers it in closed session, the statute contemplating a decision on the day of filing. Where a guarantee is required, the securing order issues once it has been provided.
Execution then matters as much as the order. Under чл. 400 ГПК the enforcement officer imposes the attachment immediately on the applicant's request on the basis of the securing order. An attachment over a bank account bites as against the bank on receipt, so the interval between order and execution is not administrative housekeeping.
An attachment restricts dealings with the asset. It does not transfer money to the creditor.
The creditor still has to establish the claim and, once it holds a title, proceed to enforcement. Security preserves the position; it does not shorten the case. Our procedural roadmap of commercial debt recovery in Bulgaria sets out the stages that follow.
This is the part usually left out, and it is the part a client needs to hear before instructing.
Under чл. 403 ГПК, where the proceedings are terminated, where the secured claim is dismissed, or where a future claim is not brought within the period fixed by the court, the party against whom the measure was directed may claim from the applicant compensation for the damage the security caused. The guarantee the court ordered exists to answer that exposure.
Interim security is therefore not a general commercial pressure tool. Applying for an attachment against a trading company on a claim that cannot properly be supported is a decision with a price attached, and it should be taken on the same analysis as the claim itself.
The debtor also has its own routes: to seek to have the measure replaced or lifted, and to apply for cancellation in the circumstances чл. 402 ГПК provides for.
For cross border cases there is a separate instrument that is often more useful than the domestic one.
Regulation (EU) 655/2014 creates the European Account Preservation Order. It is available before proceedings are started, during them, or after a judgment or authentic instrument exists, it is obtained without notice to the debtor, and it reaches bank accounts in other Member States. The Bulgarian procedural provisions implementing it are чл. 618а to чл. 618д ГПК.
Its scope is narrower than domestic security - bank accounts only, with certain claims and certain protected accounts excluded. But for a creditor facing a debtor with accounts in more than one Member State it does something no Bulgarian domestic measure can. We cover the cross border position in debt recovery in Bulgaria for foreign companies.
One point of Bulgarian practice is worth knowing. In K.H.K., Case C-555/18, the Court of Justice held that a Bulgarian order for payment against which an objection could still be made does not qualify as an authentic instrument within the meaning of Regulation 655/2014. A creditor cannot obtain a чл. 410 ГПК order and treat it the following week as a European enforceable title.
Security assumes there is still something to secure. Where the debtor has already disposed of the asset - typically by transferring a business unit, a property or a shareholding to a related party at a price bearing no relation to value - an ordinary attachment against the debtor may no longer reach it.
Under чл. 135 ЗЗД a creditor may seek to have a transaction prejudicial to it declared ineffective as against the creditor. The requirements are specific, the position differs depending on whether the disposal was for value and on what the transferee knew, and the limitation position needs checking at once.
In practice this is rarely a choice between an attachment and a claim. It is usually an action under чл. 135 ЗЗД together with a separate assessment of how that claim itself should be secured, because the transferee may be no more reliable than the debtor was.
Commercial recovery files deteriorate in a predictable order. The debtor stops communicating, then changes ownership or management, then accumulates other creditors, then disposes of anything useful, then becomes insolvent.
A security assessment at stage one costs a fraction of the litigation that follows at stage five, and it is the only stage at which the answer can still be positive.
We advise creditors on Bulgarian commercial claims, interim security, asset tracing and enforcement, and assess security at the outset where there is a real risk to recovery rather than treating it as a step that follows judgment.
To discuss an urgent security application, write to office@yardlaw.eu.
This article provides general information on Bulgarian procedure and EU instruments as at August 2026 and should not be relied upon as legal advice in a particular matter. Prepared by the legal team at YARD Law Co., a law firm based in Sofia, Bulgaria, acting for domestic and international clients in commercial disputes, enforcement and insolvency.
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