Abstract

The article addresses the problem of the relation between the costs of civil proceedings and the mechanism of offsetting the costs of debt recovery that are prescribed in the Polish late payment regulation implementing Directive 2011/7. The article analyses this issue from two interrelated viewpoints. First of all, it tries to identify the general premises of cost recovery in the late payment regulation at the Polish and the EU level with respect to the costs of proceedings. After inconclusive findings, it turns to the minimum character of the Directive, which allows Member States to introduce solutions more favourable to creditors. With this in mind, the author claims that the qualification of the costs of civil proceedings falls, in fact, within the margin of flexibility left by the European lawmaker for national systems. Consequently, treating these costs in the autonomous way provides a creditor with an additional benefit (above the costs of debt recovery compensable under the late payment regulation). The cumulation of both types of costs remains, at the same time, fully in compliance with the set concepts of the Polish law as to the autonomous nature of the costs of civil proceedings in relation to claims regulated by substantive law.