Spanish companies can be summoned electronically from 20 March

New electronic summons

The Royal Decree-Law 6/2023, of 19 December, has modified a great number of precepts of the Spanish Civil Procedure Law, including the new electronic summons.

Until now, pursuant to the doctrine of the Constitutional Court, a copy of the first summons was handled to the defendant personally.

However, the new wording of article 155 of the Civil Procedure Law provides that legal persons (for example, companies) who are obliged to interact electronically with the judicial authorities can be summoned via electronic means and, if they do not read the contents of the summons within three days after receiving the notification, they will be summoned via the Single Judicial Notice Board.

Recommendations and measures to be taken

It is recommended that companies monitor all electronic notifications carefully in order to minimise any risks and avoid the expiry of procedural deadlines.

Therefore, companies are advised to: 

• Check all notifications that may be received through electronic means such as the single Enabled Email Address (Dirección Electrónica Habilitada única – DEHú) or other enabled systems. The period established by law to read the contents of the notification is very short – only three days.
• Be registered and have access to the new Justice Folder as well as to other judicial websites (accessible through this link).
• Set up Single Bulletin Board alerts. Those notices that have not been read by the addressee company within three days of receipt of the first notification will be published in this board. 

These recommendations are some of the measures that can currently be taken. However, some of these systems are still in the pilot phase or have only been partially implemented. Furthermore, there are 10 autonomous communities that have their own judicial websites and another four that are not attached to the single Enabled Email Address.

Osborne Clarke comment

There is no doubt that the legislative change in the sending of notifications will be highly beneficial, as it will speed up court proceedings, reduce costs associated to the serving of summons and alleviate the burden of the judicial authorities.

However, there are many voices that have warned of the risks involved in this transition to electronic means, especially if companies fail to monitor the electronic notification systems properly. This is why we recommend taking all the necessary measures in order to have effective control of the electronic notification systems.