Revista da EMERJ - V. 21 - N. 2 - Maio/Agosto - 2019

 R. EMERJ, Rio de Janeiro, v. 21, n. 2, p. 40-51, Maio-Agosto, 2019  45 Garnishment of the debtor’s bank account The validity of bank secret has never been questioned. In the past, and according to a specific legislative provision (article 1 Decree Law 1059/1971, as formed by the article 10 par. 1 Law 1858/1989), a specific bank secret had been enacted, saying that “Every form of bank deposit is secret”, except in cases foreseen in specific legislation and under strictly described requirements 11 . Following the enactment of this provision, there was a discordance of case law. In 1975, the majority of the plenary of Areios Pagos con- nected the bank secret to the rule that certain assets cannot be attached and judged that the garnishment of a debtor’s bank account is invalid. In 1993, again, the majority of the plenary of Areios Pagos reiterated this judgment – in both cases there was a strong minority. The authors were, almost unanimously, of the opposite opinion. They claimed that since the power of execution of the judgment creditor is constitutionally guaranteed (article 20 Constitution), the invalidity of the garnishment of the debtor’s bank account could not be constitutionally tolerated. The inferior courts totally aligned with the interpretative stance of Areios Pagos, until 1996, when the first break happened, which led to a new, opposite judgment by Areios Pagos 12 . The plenary of Areios Pagos, in its decision 19/2001, decided that the legislative provisions which establish the secret of the deposits in Greek Banks refer exclusively to the bank secret and not to the admis- sibility of the bank account’s garnishment. An opposite interpretation, it said, would be contrary to the article 20 par. 1 of the Constitution which defines that everyone has the right to legal protection. The enforcement of judgment a form of which is the garnishment of debts (articles 982 ff Code of Civil Procedure) is included in that legal protection. Greece having ratified the Treaty of Human Rights (Decree Law 53/1974), the claim to enforcement of judgment is also derived by the ar- 11 P. Gesiou-Faltsi , The attachable as a problem of interpretation according to the Constitution and the International Con- ventions – Bank accounts [ in Greek ], in: Procedural Legal Order. IV. Studies and legal opinions of law of enforcement of judgments , Athens - Thessaloniki 2009, 177, 182-183. 12 P. Gesiou-Faltsi , The attachable, as a problem of interpretation according to the Constitution and the International Con- ventions – Bank accounts [ in Greek ], in: Procedural Legal Order. IV. Studies and legal opinions of law of enforcement of judgments , Athens - Thessaloniki 2009, 185.