On Wednesday, 19 November 2025, the Council and the European Parliament reached agreement. The subject is a directive that aligns parts of insolvency law in all 27 member states. That sounds like specialist law for lawyers. For business owners and people of means it is more than that.
Because the agreement gives insolvency practitioners a new reach. Through designated courts or authorities, they are to be able to look into the central bank account registers. Not only in their own country. In the registers of other member states as well.
Anyone who carries liability, as a director, as a shareholder with a personal guarantee, as a self-employed person, should know what this means. How creditors already reach private assets today, and why protection has to be built early, is set out on our page on creditor access. First the agreement of 19 November, then the rules it meets.
What Council and Parliament agreed
According to the Council's press release, the Danish Council presidency and Parliament's negotiators reached a provisional agreement. The stated aim: creditors should recover as much as possible from an insolvent company, and proceedings should become more efficient. Investors should no longer have to examine up to 27 different sets of insolvency rules.
The agreement has six building blocks:
- Avoidance actions. All member states must apply minimum standards so that legal acts of the debtor before insolvency proceedings can be challenged.
- Asset tracing. Through designated courts or authorities, insolvency practitioners gain access to national and foreign bank account registers, to beneficial ownership registers and to certain other national registers and databases.
- Pre-pack proceedings. The sale of a business can be prepared before insolvency proceedings are opened.
- Duty of management. Directors must file for insolvency within three months of becoming aware of the financial distress.
- Creditors' committees. Under certain circumstances they must be set up in all member states.
- Transparency. Every country draws up a fact sheet on its insolvency law.
The agreement still has to be confirmed and formally adopted by Council and Parliament. After that, member states have two years and nine months to transpose it.
How the Council justifies the agreement
The Council justifies the agreement with the capital market. As early as 2015, it says, Parliament, Council, Commission and the ECB named insolvency law as a key area for a capital markets union. In 2019 the International Monetary Fund described insolvency practice as one of the three main obstacles to deeper integration of European capital markets. And according to figures from the European Banking Authority from 2020, it takes between 0.6 and 7 years, depending on the country, for creditors to get their money back. Procedural costs range from zero to more than ten per cent.
The stated goal: faster proceedings, more money for creditors. Every rule that brings creditors more money brings it back from somewhere. From the assets of those who are liable. And from the assets of those to whom something flowed beforehand.
The new view into the account registers
The second building block matters most for your wealth. The Council describes it like this: member states are to designate courts or authorities that, at the request of an insolvency practitioner, can access and search national central bank account registers and registers in other member states. Access to other countries' registers runs through the bank account registers interconnection system.
The Commission had already laid this down in its proposal of 7 December 2022. Article 14 provided that designated courts can access bank account information "directly and immediately" at the practitioner's request. That is, where this is necessary to find assets belonging to the insolvency estate, including assets that are the subject of avoidance actions.
Read the last part twice. This is not only about money still sitting in the company. It is also about money that flowed to third parties beforehand and is to be clawed back.
What the registers contain
Which data these registers hold is governed by another EU law. Directive (EU) 2024/1640, part of the EU's new anti-money-laundering package, sets out in Article 16 what the national mechanisms must record. This includes:
- bank and payment accounts, with IBAN and opening date,
- securities accounts,
- crypto-asset accounts,
- safe deposit boxes, with the name of the lessee and the start of the lease.
And paragraph 6 of the same provision states: the national mechanisms are connected through the bank account registers interconnection system, which the Commission develops and operates. The Commission is to ensure the interconnection by 10 July 2029.
Put the two laws together. One builds an EU-wide interconnection of registers that record accounts, securities accounts, crypto accounts and safe deposit boxes. The other opens that interconnection to insolvency practitioners. Such registers were originally created to fight money laundering. Now they also serve creditors' access.
An instrument built for one purpose finds a second. That is how powers grow.
Beneficial ownership registers too
The agreement is not limited to accounts. According to the Council, insolvency practitioners are also to gain access to beneficial ownership registers, regardless of the country in which they are established. In every member state this is the national register that records the beneficial owner of a company.
For structures this is decisive. A company in an EU country whose beneficial owner is on the register can be found by a practitioner with a single search. The United Kingdom also keeps a public register. Our page on the foundation-style Limited says so openly: it offers no anonymity.
A structure that can be found is not useless for that reason. But its protection has to rest on its legal design, not on invisibility. And on the moment at which it was set up.
What already applies in the UK
The directive does not bind the United Kingdom, which is outside the EU. British insolvency law, however, already reaches far back in time. Under the Insolvency Act 1986, a company's liquidator or administrator can challenge a transaction at an undervalue made in the two years ending with the onset of insolvency, and a preference given to a connected person in the same period. For an individual who is later made bankrupt, the look-back period for transactions at an undervalue is five years. For a transaction with an associate, the law presumes that the individual was insolvent at the time, unless the contrary is shown.
Then there is section 423. A gift or a transaction at significantly less than value can be set aside if the court is satisfied that it was entered into for the purpose of putting assets beyond the reach of someone who is making, or may at some time make, a claim. The section itself states no time limit.
The Commission's 2022 proposal set a period of four years for avoidance based on intent. But it expressly allowed member states to keep stricter rules where these protect creditors better. The EU therefore sets a floor, not a ceiling. Countries with milder rules have to catch up, and stricter rules remain possible.
On intent, the proposal holds a further rule. If the other side was a party closely related to the debtor, it is presumed to have known of the intent to prejudice creditors. Family members and associated companies are thus harder to protect than strangers.
Contracts change hands without consent
The third building block has consequences for business owners who are not insolvent themselves. In pre-pack proceedings the sale of a business is prepared before insolvency proceedings are formally opened. According to the Council, contracts essential to continuing the business are to be able to pass automatically from the debtor to the buyer without the consent of the counterparty. The Council secured safeguards to protect freedom of contract. But the basic rule is: anyone who has a contract with a business can, in pre-pack proceedings, end up with a new counterparty they did not choose.
Three months to file for insolvency
The fourth building block affects every director directly. Under the agreement, management must file within three months of becoming aware of the financial distress. Under the Council's position, member states can suspend the duty if management takes other measures that protect creditors to an equivalent degree.
In the UK the risk takes a different form. There, a director who knew or ought to have concluded that there was no reasonable prospect of the company avoiding insolvent liquidation or administration can be ordered by the court, on the liquidator's or administrator's application, to contribute to the company's assets. That is wrongful trading under section 214 of the Insolvency Act. The only defence is that the director took every step with a view to minimising the potential loss to creditors. In the member states, the duty to file is now being aligned at European level.
Ireland, the Nordics and Benelux
Ireland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg are members of the EU. In each of them the directive will have to be transposed, including insolvency practitioners' access to the interconnected registers.
Norway and the United Kingdom are not members of the EU. Neither the insolvency directive nor the anti-money-laundering directive applies there. For accounts in those countries the agreement of 19 November changes nothing directly. But anyone who lives and carries liability in a member state usually keeps their accounts where the new rules apply.
What this means for you
Nobody plans to become insolvent. But every business owner knows that it can happen. A major customer fails. A guarantee is called. A tax dispute escalates. Our page on personal liability shows how quickly a risk of the business becomes a risk to private wealth.
The agreement of 19 November changes three things about that risk:
- The search crosses borders. An account in another EU country is no longer hard for a practitioner to find.
- The registers become broader. Accounts, securities accounts, crypto accounts, safe deposit boxes.
- Avoidance becomes European. Minimum standards apply everywhere, and stricter national rules remain.
From this follows the most important rule of asset protection, sharper than before: protection is built before liability arises. Transfers made in anticipation of a claim can be unwound. Under section 423 of the UK's Insolvency Act, without a time limit in the section itself. Whoever acts only when the demand letter arrives acts too late.
And a second rule follows. An account in another EU country is no protection against a practitioner from the EU. The interconnection is built for precisely that. Anyone who wants to protect wealth needs a structure outside this interconnection, set up in good time and cleanly.
Which structures come into question
Two structures outside the EU stand side by side. The UK variant is a Company Limited by Guarantee. How it works as a legal form, and why its assets cannot be seized when it is correctly structured, is set out on our page on the foundation-style Limited (Company Limited by Guarantee). The Wyoming LLC stands level beside it. It offers the greatest geographical distance from the EU and creditor protection through so-called charging order protection.
Both routes have one thing in common. They only work if they are in place long before liability arises. A structure set up in the crisis is exactly what avoidance actions are made for.
Anyone already thinking about a move abroad has an additional lever. The move itself is the measure with the greatest leverage. Only with an actual move abroad do structures such as a trust or a Family Investment Company come into question.
The agreement of 19 November is not yet law. But its direction is clearly described. What creditors can find out about you is growing. The time you have to act is not.
Postscript (as of 23 September 2026)
Since the post, the agreement has become law. The European Parliament approved it on 10 March 2026, the Council on 30 March 2026 (procedure 2022/0408(COD)). Directive (EU) 2026/799 harmonising certain aspects of insolvency law appeared in the Official Journal on 1 April 2026. Member states must transpose it by 22 January 2029. For access through the interconnected bank account registers, the date is 10 July 2029, the day on which the interconnection is also to be in place. The new avoidance rules apply to legal acts completed from the entry into force of national transposition. How creditors already reach private assets today is set out under creditor access.