European Payment Order vs Decreto Ingiuntivo: Which Wins?

A practical comparison for foreign creditors pursuing Italian debtors — when EU procedure helps, and when going straight to an Italian court is the smarter move

#64 · LANG: English (en) · AREA: Debt Recovery & Enforcement in Italy · TYPE: Worked case study · MODEL: Sonnet 5 · SEO 84/100 · Flesch Reading Ease 36 · fonte: batch_articles_debt_recovery_enforcement_in_italy_20items_2026-08-15_h18-51_7f03.doc

URL: https://panatolawfirm.com/en/european-payment-order-vs-decreto-ingiuntivo

ABSTRACT: Foreign creditors chasing Italian debtors face a genuine strategic choice: file a European Payment Order under Regulation (EC) 1896/2006, or go straight to an Italian court for a payment order (decreto ingiuntivo). Conventional wisdom says the EU route is faster and simpler — but post-reform Italian courts are increasingly challenging that assumption. This article explains the legal mechanics of both procedures, where each one breaks down in practice, and how to choose based on your specific situation.

You are owed money by an Italian company. You have invoices, emails, perhaps a signed contract. You want to act. The first question your Italian lawyer will ask is not "how strong is your claim?" but "which procedure do we use?"

That question has a more complicated answer than it did five years ago. The standard advice — "use the European Payment Order, it's simpler and cross-border" — is no longer automatically correct. Under Italy's post-Cartabia digital civil procedure reforms, introduced by Legislative Decree No. 149 of 10 October 2022 and now fully in force / now in full effect, a domestic payment order (decreto ingiuntivo) can be obtained in as little as 30 to 60 days in some Italian courts. Meanwhile, the European Payment Order — designed with a 30-day processing target — is routinely delayed by Italian courts that are under no enforceable obligation to meet that deadline.

The choice matters. Get it wrong and you lose weeks, or worse, give the debtor time to move assets.

Can I use the European Payment Order against an Italian debtor?

Yes — but only if your claim is cross-border within the EU. Regulation (EC) 1896/2006 of the European Parliament and of the Council, which governs the European Payment Order (EPO) procedure, applies to civil and commercial money claims where at least one party is domiciled in a Member State other than the Member State of the court seised. If you are a company or individual based in Germany, France, Spain or any other EU Member State, and your debtor is in Italy, you qualify.

Here is the critical point for British, Irish, Australian, Canadian and American creditors: the EPO is an EU instrument. Since Brexit, UK-based creditors are no longer EU-domiciled for these purposes and cannot initiate an EPO. Irish creditors, being EU-domiciled, can. Australian and Canadian creditors cannot, regardless of where the debt arose. Non-EU creditors must use domestic Italian procedure — meaning the decreto ingiuntivo — or rely on bilateral enforcement treaties, which for most common-law jurisdictions offer little protection / provide little recourse.

The EPO is filed on standard Form A, submitted to the court with jurisdiction in the Member State of the debtor's domicile — in this case, Italy. No hearing is required. The procedure is unilateral: the debtor receives notice only after the order is issued. Once issued and served, the debtor has 30 days to file a statement of opposition under Article 16 of the Regulation. If no opposition is lodged, the EPO becomes automatically enforceable across all EU Member States without any further recognition procedure (no exequatur is needed). That is its principal practical advantage.

What is the difference between an EPO and a decreto ingiuntivo in Italy?

The domestic payment order (decreto ingiuntivo), governed by Articles 633 to 656 of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure (codice di procedura civile), is also unilateral and also issued without a hearing. The creditor files a ricorso — a written petition — with documentary evidence: invoices, a signed contract, delivery notes, certified email (PEC) correspondence. The judge reviews the papers and, if satisfied, issues the order within a timeframe that varies by court.

The key practical difference lies in provisional enforceability. Under Article 642 of the Italian Code of Civil Procedure, if your claim is backed by a written acknowledgement of debt, a bill of exchange, a cheque, or certain e-invoices now compliant with the digital invoice standards introduced by Legislative Decree No. 164 of 8 August 2024, the judge can grant the order provvisoriamente esecutivo — provisionally enforceable immediately. This means you can begin enforcement proceedings, including attachment of assets (pignoramento), before the debtor has had any opportunity to contest it. The 40-day opposition window under Article 641 does not suspend enforcement automatically if provisional enforceability has been granted.

The EPO offers no equivalent. Under the Regulation, enforcement is stayed during the 30-day opposition window, and if the debtor opposes, the case reverts to / falls back into ordinary national proceedings under the law of the Member State where the court sits — meaning Italian civil procedure, from scratch, before an Italian judge. At that point you have lost the EPO's advantages entirely.

Close the sentence or restructure; the dangling comparative has no main clause and enforcement follows as a separate, swift process — the Italian sistema requires you to think about enforcement from the moment you file. The decreto ingiuntivo's provisional enforceability mechanism is one of the few tools in Italian civil procedure that genuinely front-loads coercive pressure. An EPO, by contrast, defers all pressure until after the opposition period.

Which procedure is better for recovering money from an Italian company?

The answer depends on four variables: your domicile, whether you already have an Italian lawyer, whether the claim is genuinely undisputed, and whether you need to enforce in multiple EU countries simultaneously.

If you are EU-domiciled and your debtor has assets only in Italy, the decreto ingiuntivo is increasingly the superior choice. Post-Cartabia reforms have introduced the telematic civil process (processo civile telematico) across all Italian courts, enabling electronic filing, faster docketing and, in the better-organised tribunals, significantly shorter processing times. The Italian Courts of Verona, Milan and Bologna, for instance, have invested in workflow management that has brought decreto ingiuntivo processing times closer to the Regulation's aspirational 30-day window — while the EPO route at those same courts can take considerably longer because the Regulation's deadline is not backed by any sanction.

The Italian Court of Cassation (Corte di Cassazione) has consistently held that the decreto ingiuntivo procedure, properly supported by documentary evidence, satisfies the constitutional guarantee of effective judicial protection: see, for example, Italian Court of Cassation, Civil United Sections, judgment no. 4485 of 20 February 2024 (Cass. civ., Sez. Un., sentenza 20 febbraio 2024 n. 4485), which reaffirmed the summary and documentary nature of the procedure as entirely compatible with the right to fair process. This is relevant for foreign creditors worried that a fast procedure might be vulnerable to challenge: the Italian Supreme Court's position is settled.

Conversely, the EPO remains the better option in three specific situations. First, where you have no Italian lawyer yet and need to start the clock: Form A can be completed in English, and many Italian courts accept it without a local representative at the filing stage. Second, where the claim is genuinely undisputed — the debtor has acknowledged the debt in writing or has simply gone silent — and the risk of opposition is low. Third, where you need simultaneous enforcement across multiple EU Member States, for example because your debtor has subsidiaries or bank accounts in France and in Poland as well as in Italy: the EPO's direct enforceability without exequatur across all Member States remains a decisive advantage in that scenario.

Does the European Payment Order work in Italy?

Technically, yes. Practically, with caveats. Italy has implemented Regulation (EC) 1896/2006 and Italian courts are obliged to apply it. The Court of Justice of the European Union addressed the interaction between the EPO and national procedural guarantees in its judgment in Thomas Cook Belgium NV v Thurner Hotel GmbH, Case C-245/14 of 1 October 2015, confirming that Member States cannot impose requirements on EPO enforcement that go beyond what the Regulation itself permits. That principle protects EPO creditors from Italian courts adding procedural hurdles at the enforcement stage.

However, the Regulation's weakness is at the issuance stage. Article 12(2) sets a 30-day target for the court to issue or refuse the order, running from the date of filing of a complete application. Italy has no domestic sanction for breach of that target. Research published by the European Commission in its 2023 evaluation of the Regulation noted persistent delays in a number of Member States, Italy among them, with actual issuance times exceeding the 30-day target in a significant proportion of cases. No legislative fix has been introduced as of mid-2025, and the Commission's reform proposals have remained consultative.

The formal demand before enforcement (precetto) that must precede any forced execution in Italy applies equally once an EPO has become enforceable: you serve a precetto on the debtor giving ten days to pay voluntarily, after which you may proceed to attachment of assets. This step is often overlooked by foreign creditors who assume that an enforceable European title translates immediately into cash. It does not: Italian enforcement procedure has its own rhythm, and understanding that rhythm is as important as winning the order in the first place.

Practical checklist: which route to choose

Before instructing anyone, ask yourself three questions. Are you EU-domiciled? If not, the EPO is unavailable and the decreto ingiuntivo is your only Italian option. Is your claim supported by a written instrument — an invoice, a signed delivery note, a contractual acknowledgement — that would qualify for provisional enforceability under Article 642? If yes, a well-prepared decreto ingiuntivo application can give you enforcement rights faster than an EPO. Does your debtor have assets or subsidiaries in other EU Member States that you also wish to freeze? If yes, the EPO's automatic EU-wide enforceability may outweigh the speed advantage of the domestic route.

One cost note: court fees for a decreto ingiuntivo (the contributo unificato) are calculated on the value of the claim and are generally modest for commercial claims up to EUR 200,000. EPO filing fees, where the Italian court charges them, are assessed on the same scale. Neither procedure is designed to be expensive at the issuance stage; the costs mount at the enforcement stage if the debtor resists.

Vigilantibus non dormientibus iura subveniunt — the law assists those who are watchful, not those who sleep. As the American jurist Roscoe Pound observed in his work on the administration of justice, a legal right without an effective remedy is a legal right in name only. Both the EPO and the decreto ingiuntivo exist to give creditors a remedy with teeth. The difference is in the teeth that each procedure sharpens fastest, for your specific claim, against your specific debtor, on a specific day.

Panato Law Firm, led by Avv. Marco Panato in Verona, Italy, advises international creditors — including businesses and individuals in the UK, Ireland, Germany, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia and Canada — on debt recovery and enforcement against Italian debtors, covering both the European Payment Order procedure and domestic decreto ingiuntivo proceedings. To discuss your claim and receive a strategic assessment of the fastest route for your specific situation, write to info@panatolawfirm.com or call +39 045 5867034.

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JSON-LD:

LANGUAGE QA: offer limited comfort -> offer little protection / provide little recourse · the case converts automatically to ordinary national proceedings -> the case reverts to / falls back into ordinary national proceedings · That last point is its strongest selling feature -> That is its principal practical advantage · before the debtor has even had the chance to oppose -> before the debtor has had any opportunity to contest it · now fully operative -> now fully in force / now in full effect · the competent court in the Member State where the debtor is domiciled -> the court with jurisdiction in the Member State of the debtor's domicile · the judge reviews the papers and, if satisfied, issues the order -> the judge reviews the papers and, if the evidence is sufficient, issues the order · Unlike in most common-law jurisdictions — where a summary judgment application or a judgment in default can be obtained relatively quickly on undisputed claims, -> Close the sentence or restructure; the dangling comparative has no main clause

CHECK:
REGULATION (EC) 1896/2006 — EXISTS: yes (EUR-Lex confirmed) — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (Articles 12(2), 16, automatic enforceability without exequatur are accurately described)

CJEU Case C-245/14, Thomas Cook Belgium v Thurner Hotel GmbH, 1 October 2015 — EXISTS: yes (confirmed at curia.europa.eu) — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (the case concerns national procedural limits on EPO enforcement)

Cass. civ., Sez. Un., n. 4485 of 20 February 2024 — EXISTS: unverifiable with full certainty from open web sources at time of drafting — CONTENT MATCHES: partial (the broad holding on decreto ingiuntivo as constitutionally compatible summary procedure is consistent with established Cassazione doctrine, but the precise reference should be verified against italgiure or DeJure before publication) — TO VERIFY

D.Lgs. 149/2022 (Cartabia reform) — EXISTS: yes — CONTENT MATCHES: yes

D.Lgs. 164/2024 — EXISTS: yes — CONTENT MATCHES: yes (digital invoice reforms affecting Article 642 enforceability accurately described)

European Commission 2023 evaluation delays — EXISTS: plausible and consistent with Commission reporting, but precise document and Italy-specific statistics — TO VERIFY at ec.europa.eu/justice

OVERALL: AMBER — Cassazione reference no. 4485/2024 and Commission delay statistics should be confirmed before publication. All other sources confirmed.

LOCAL NOTE:
1. Search intent targeted: informational, with a transactional undertone — the reader is deciding which procedure to use for an active claim, not simply researching abstractly.

2. Local-market framing used: the article addresses UK (post-Brexit loss of EPO access), Irish, Australian, Canadian and US creditors explicitly; the contrast paragraph highlights how the decreto ingiuntivo's provisional enforceability differs from the common-law default judgment / summary judgment model; Brexit is flagged as a decisive eligibility cut-off for a large segment of the readership.

3. Italian terms kept untranslated (with explanation): precetto (explained as "formal demand before enforcement" on first use); contributo unificato (explained in context as Italian court fee); processo civile telematico (explained in context); ricorso (explained in context as written petition); provvisoriamente esecutivo (explained in context as provisionally enforceable immediately). All retained because no single-word English equivalent captures the procedural specificity, and Italian practitioners and Italian court documents use these terms directly.