Back in 2020, the European Commission announced in the Capital Markets Union Action Plan the launch of an initiative on legislative or non-legislative measures to ensure a minimum level of harmonisation in certain areas of corporate insolvency law for non-banks. Finally, in December 2022, the European Commission published a proposal for a directive to harmonise certain aspects of insolvency law (COM(2022)/702 final). The proposal focuses on (i) asset recovery from liquidated insolvency estates, (ii) the efficiency of insolvency proceedings, and (iii) the predictability and fair distribution of the recovered value among creditors. New to Austrian insolvency law and therefore of particular interest is the "pre-pack proceeding". It remains to be seen how the Member States will view the proposal and when a directive will finally be adopted.

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