How it works
Once you have obtained a username and a password from the FAB team, you fill in “username”, “password” and click on “submit” to enter the applet. On the homepage you will find a presentation of the Find a Bailiff directory and activities on the homepage. Then, if you click on ‘bailiff’ it will provide you with the list of bailiffs registered in the Directory for your Member State.
To complete the list, you have several options :
1) you can download a template which is an Excel sheet which includes names, addresses, zip codes, cities. You then fill in the information in the template and upload it in the applet. The information in the Excel sheet is then automatically retrieved and used to create your national directory. The information is also uploaded into the European Directory.
At any time you can replace the Excel file to update the data.
2) The other option is to click on ‘Add’, where after you can add a specific bailiff office: you can fill the name, address, city postal code, phone, e-mail, website, accepted languages and instruments in accordance with your bailiff competence. Once you have filled in the information, click on ‘reference codes’. The reference codes indicate the instruments for which the bailiffs in your Member State are competent.
It is assumed that the bailiffs of your MS are competent authorities for enforcement within the European small claims procedure, the European account preservation order, the European enforcement order procedure, the European order for payment procedure and for maintenance obligations. However, you can change this if not correct.
To make it easier to fill in Bailiffs’ data, the FAB application offers a way to import national geographical data from ‘GeoNames’. If you are from France, you click on ‘FR Zip’. With this file, you import all the information about the Zip Codes and the corresponding towns. Once you have retrieved the content of the Zip, it can be uploaded to the applet by clicking on the button ‘import data’.
Please be aware that the geographical data is an “all or nothing” process: the import is not a delta, but a complete one. Then, to define the geographical area corresponding to the geographical competence of different bailiffs/enforcement authorities, you need to click on ‘Geo Area’.
Here you can define the geographical areas corresponding to a geographical competence. The geographical areas are important because it corresponds to the geographical competence of the bailiff and could include several zip codes. As an example, a French bailiff can be competent for Paris, but also to other towns close to Paris if they belong to the geographical competence of the court of Paris.
It is therefore important to carefully define and affect the Geo Areas. Once you have filled in all these forms, your national database of bailiffs is ready, and it is automatically connected to the Find a Bailiff directory and the European Court Database!
