The e-Auction User Manual has been published and is now available on the Justice Ministry’s website (click here). The e-Auction application itself was launched on 14 August 2020 and the first public sale notice since the launch has been published on the platform. The object of this sale is a warehouse.
The User Manual clearly outlines all the steps stakeholders, i.e. interested private persons and legal entities, need to take to be able to use the platform — how to register, how to create a user account and what details to add to their profile, how to log-in each time and how to select the right digital signature reader (e-certificate), how to pay for their subscription, how to pay guarantees, how to authorise a proxy to take part in the e-auction on their behalf, how to search and view their log-in history and all open public sales and bidding, how to submit their bids in the electronic public sales procedure, that is e-auctions. The User Manual also shows how a registered external user can search through the public auctions by their status, categories and tags, how to register for e-bidding, and how to place a bid once an e-auction has started.
The introduction of the e-Auction platform — accessed from this website: eaukcija.sud.rs — was prescribed by the latest Amendments to the Enforcement and Security Act, making it the exclusive way of public sales in enforcement proceedings starting from 1 September 2020. Until then, public bailiffs may choose how to conduct public sales.
All stakeholders with a registered digital signature issued by an authorised certification body in line with all positive laws, will have the right to participate in e-auctions. All bidders are anonymous, making it impossible for them and the public bailiffs conducting the sale to identify persons behind the identification numbers which the system automatically assigns to them.
For anyone wishing to bid in the auctions with access to all sales, the annual user fee is 2,000 dinars. Anyone not registered as a bidder will still be able to access the platform and all the relevant information, as a way of ensuring full transparency of the sales procedures.
The purpose of automatising the public bidding procedure is three-fold: to increase legal certainty through a transparent procedure, to achieve efficiency, and to eliminate all known problems in public sales to prevent fraud. The end result should be an increased public trust in the public bailiffs as holders of public authority.