International debt collection (international inkasso)
Also known as cross-border collection, foreign debt collection, collection abroad, international inkasso, udenlandsk inkasso, grænseoverskridende inkasso, inkasso i udlandet
International debt collection is the recovery of claims against debtors abroad — under different rules on jurisdiction, choice of law and enforcement.
In practice
A claim against a German customer is not a claim that disappears. Within the EU a Danish judgment can be enforced in the debtor’s own country, and there is a common procedure — the European order for payment — for the undisputed claims.
What decides how hard it becomes is rarely the recovery itself. It is what the contract said: if jurisdiction and choice of law were agreed, you know where the case is to be brought and under which rules. If they were not, the case opens with a question that can take months in itself.
Where it commonly goes wrong
- The terms of trade say nothing about jurisdiction and choice of law. That is where a foreign case becomes expensive — not in the recovery itself.
- Foreign claims are left to lie longer than domestic ones. Distance does not make them improve with age.