Selling to Italy?

Hello Jim
The late Payments of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1988 is European legislation so all member states (should be...) using the current legislation. Creditsafe's advice below is pretty sound!

The revised legislation is meant to bring improvements to help create a level playing field throughout Europe (being part of the Small Business Act). This stipulates what each member state should introduce as a minimum regarding late payment. However each country has until 16th of March 2013 to implement the legislation so I don't think that most will be rushing it through.

We already meet most of the minimum requirements such as late payment compensation but there are some beneficial changes (such as being able to claim back costs for legal fees or the use of debt recovery specialists) and as mentioned above, the new legislation lays down the minimum each state should adopt. There is no reason why we cannot push to have a higher levels of compensation and interest calculated on a bigger rate than 8% plus reference rate.

I hope to shortly summerise the revisions to the legislation and publish them here. Then to create a survey to find out what changes/improvements businesses would like to see our government introduce.

Here is a link to the revised late payment legislation in all languages.

David

Hello Jim

I did a quick search and found out some information about the LME in France. This is rather a specialist area though (being in French!) but it does seem to me that any changes are in line with the EU legislation.

The recast legislation is meant to unify all member states to the same set of regulations and 30 days is the recommendation. It is possible agree terms up to 60 days.

If I can find something a bit more solid, I will post the links here.

David

Hello Jim
Sorry, I missed this one. I couldn't really say how quickly EU member states will adopt the recast legislation but I'm sure certain countries will not be rushing it through and they will need the time to make the necessary preparations.

For the UK, we meet most of the requirements already but I think there is an opportunity to press for improvements to our current implementation such as an increase in compensation levels the reference rate.

I will contact the Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform to ask their opinion of the recast and when they will implement changes.

Regards

David