END OF "DEBT SLAVERY": A REALITY OR UNFULFILLED WISH OF THE LEGISLATOR

Abstract

With the latest amendments to the Law on Obligations, the legislator predicted significant reforms in debt-trust relations. For the first time in Macedonian law, after independence, the flow of penalty interest is limited by reaching the amount of the claim. A shorter deadline for the claims set forth in the judicial correction, a decision of another competent authority, by settlement before the court or other competent authority, is introduced and an absolute expiry date of claims is introduced from the moment of commencement of enforcement. In the paper, the author analyzes the institute of obsolescence through the prism of the latest legislative changes with the intention of pointing to certain illogicalities, collisions and ambiguities that create problems and dilemmas in their application in practice. Special attention is paid to the retroactive action of the legal changes, which is a rare example in civil legislation. This is in order to answer the question of whether the retroactive action of the legislative changes is legally sustained and whether the legislator has managed to "amnesty" debtors and put an end to "debt slavery" or only increased legal uncertainty.