Directive (EU) 2019/1023 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 20 June 2019 on preventive restructuring frameworks, second chance and measures to improve the efficiency of write-off, insolvency and restructuring proceedings, represent the first European standard with a harmonizing purpose in this area. It entered into force on 16 July 2019.

To date, there are several Member States that have not transposed the contents of this (EU) Directive into their national legal systems, among them Spain and Belgium.

The Second Chance Europe Platform, Initiative of lawyer Juan Manuel Revuelta, was created with the aim of launching the necessary actions for the correct application and implementation of this Directive:

• ensuring that viable companies and entrepreneurs in financial difficulties have access to effective national preventive restructuring frameworks that allow them to continue their business;
• that insolvent in good faith natural person debtors can enjoy full discharge of their debts after a reasonable period of time, which would provide them with a second chance;
• that the effectiveness of debt restructuring, insolvency and discharge procedures be improved, in particular with a view to reducing their duration

The Second Chance Europe platform raises TWO IMPORTANT QUESTIONS as a matter of urgency:

1^st – Possible and different actions both at a “lobby” level and at a legal level to denounce before the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of the European Union, the Economic and Social Committee, the OMBUDSMAN, and the European Court of Justice the patent infringements of the mandatory Community regulations incurred by the Member States that have not proceeded to transpose the Directive in due time and form, as well as to defend the rights and interests of those people who are affected and harmed by these infringements consisting of the omission of the mandatory transposition of the Directive.

2^nd – The possibility that the application of European regulations (EU Directive) may be invoked directly by a private businessman against the actions of a Member State, assuming as a premise that the primacy or priority of European Union law over national legal systems is enshrined as a basic and indisputable principle of European law.