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  48 hand to obstruct the abusive handling by the enforcement agents and on the other hand to accelerate the enforcement procedure and make it more efficient. An important step to the acceleration of the enforcement proce- dure was the establishment of the corrective caveat (article 954 IV Code of Civil Procedure) and its separation from the general caveat against the execution (article 933 Code of Civil Procedure) 20 . Law 3714/2008 brought radical changes to the public auction pro- cedure. The recent procedural reform by the Law 3994/2011 had as result lenient interventions to the enforcement of judgments. Among the most important are the abolishment of imprisonment for commercial debts and the considerable increase of the amount of the monetary penalty. The protection of the weak parties constitutes a steady aim of the contemporary legislator 21 . Enforcement of foreign judgments In order that a foreign judgment be declared enforceable, the de- feated party must not have been deprived of the right to defense and generally of the right to participation in the trial, except if this deprivation is based on a law provision that is also valid for the citizens of the State a court of which has issued the judgment (article 323 no 3, 905 par. 3 Code of Civil Procedure). This requirement refers to those cases, where a party files an application asking for a foreign judgment issued abroad ex parte to be enforced 22 . The declaration of enforceability of the ex parte judgments cannot be excluded, although it does create problems. 20 N. Nikas , Forty five years of application of the Code of Civil Procedure. Enforcement of judgments (past, present and future) [ in Greek ], Review of Civil Procedure 2012, 265, 267. 21 N. Nikas , Forty five years of application of the Code of Civil Procedure. Enforcement of judgments (past, present and future) [ in Greek ], Review of Civil Procedure 2012, 268, mentions that this is really a duty created by the nature and the function of law itself – Lex secunda plebis . Nevertheless, he is worried that the extreme leniency towards the judgment debtor might not only weaken the legal protection of the judgment creditor, but also damage the debtor him/herself, by augmenting his/her debt and perpetuating his/her “captivity”. 22 P. Gesiou-Faltsi , International enforcement of judgments [ in Greek ], Athens – Thessaloniki 2006, 104-105; A. Anthimos, Recog- nition and enforcement of ex parte foreign judgments. Internal law – Bilateral and multilateral conventions – European Community Law [ in Greek ], 2002, 22 ff.