Directive (EU) 2026/799 on the harmonisation of certain aspects of insolvency law introduces, among other reforms, a new framework for asset tracing by insolvency practitioners across the European Union.

While this initiative is a welcome recognition that effective insolvency proceedings require the ability to identify and locate debtor assets, the Directive ultimately reflects a principle of minimum intervention that risks entrenching, rather than overcoming, existing divergences between Member States’ legal regimes and legal cultures.

This article summarises the Directive’s asset tracing provisions and offers a critical assessment of whether such a cautious approach can deliver truly effective and homogeneous asset recovery across the EU.

What is changing: the new asset tracing toolbox

For officeholders and litigators, the basic message is straightforward: there will be more formal routes to obtain information on the debtor’s assets, especially in cross‑border cases. The Directive does this in three main ways.

• First, it strengthens access to bank account information. Member States must ensure that courts or designated administrative authorities can query national bank account registers – and, once operational, the EU‑wide Bank Account Registers Interconnection System (BARIS) – at the request of the insolvency practitioner. The information should help identify bank relationships and follow transfers that may lead to avoidance actions.

• Second, it mandates access to beneficial ownership data. Practitioners must be granted timely access to beneficial ownership registers to find out who ultimately controls companies or other legal arrangements connected to the debtor. This is particularly relevant where assets are held through layered structures or vehicles in multiple jurisdictions.

• Third, it opens the door to a broader set of national registers and databases listed in Annex I to the Directive. These include, among others, cadastral and land registers, registers of movable property (such as vehicles, ships and aircraft), and other sector‑specific databases that may reveal assets belonging to the estate.

Taken together, these measures should give practitioners a clearer and faster picture of where the debtor’s assets are, which assets can be realised and where avoidance or claw‑back actions are worth pursuing.

Timelines and planning: 2029 is closer than it looks

The asset tracing regime is subject to specific deadlines.

Member States must ensure that access to beneficial ownership registers and the Annex I asset registers is available to insolvency practitioners by 22 April 2029.

Separately, BARIS – which builds on the existing patchwork of national bank account registers – is expected to be in operation by 10 July 2029 under Directive (EU) 2024/1640, the latest EU anti‑money‑laundering directive.

These dates matter for practitioners for two reasons:

• In the short term, access remains governed by existing national rules, which are highly uneven in terms of what information is available, who can request it, and under what conditions.
• From a medium‑term perspective, firms should already start mapping which authorities and registers in their key jurisdictions will be relevant once the new regime is in force, and how those tools can be integrated into their standard insolvency playbook.

In other words, the Directive is a phased re‑wiring of how information flows in insolvency proceedings. The practitioners who benefit most will likely be those who prepare early and understand both the new EU‑level framework and its national variations.

Minimum harmonisation in a very diverse Union

The core limitation of the reform lies in its design. Directive 2026/799 sets minimum standards, not a fully harmonised regime. It tells Member States what results to achieve – effective access to asset information for the purposes of insolvency – but gives them considerable freedom as to how to get there.

In practice, this means that the Directive does not:

• impose a single technical model for registers or their interconnection;
• fully align the conditions for access, such as evidentiary thresholds or the need to demonstrate a “legitimate interest”;
• harmonise deadlines for authorities to respond; or
• standardise costs and fees associated with data requests

This is not accidental. The asset tracing rules touch sensitive areas: anti‑money‑laundering policy, data protection, and national traditions around the publicity of registers. After the Court of Justice curtailed general public access to beneficial ownership registers on privacy grounds, the EU legislator has moved towards a more nuanced concept of “legitimate interest”, particularly in the anti‑money‑laundering package. The new insolvency framework draws on that same balance, but leaves much to national implementation.

For practitioners, the practical consequence is clear: there will be more tools on paper, but how sharp and how easy to use those tools are will depend heavily on where you are litigating.

Legal cultures matter: different practices, different outcomes

Beyond black‑letter law, legal culture will play a major role. In some Member States, insolvency practitioners are seen almost as public officials, with strong investigative powers and a clear mandate to act in the collective interest of creditors. In others, they are treated more as private actors whose requests for third‑party information must be scrutinised cautiously.

The same EU text can therefore lead to very different national practices. For example:

• A court in one jurisdiction may interpret the requirement that information be “necessary” for tracing assets broadly, granting access quickly and with minimal additional formalities.
• A court in another jurisdiction may demand detailed substantiation of why each register entry is needed, turning what should be a relatively swift information request into a mini‑trial on necessity and proportionality.

Differences in digitalisation and administrative capacity will also matter. Well‑funded registry systems with modern IT infrastructure can respond to queries in hours or days. Under‑resourced systems may struggle to meet even generous deadlines. The Directive does not solve these structural disparities; it simply overlays a common framework on top of them.

For cross‑border cases, this means practitioners will continue to deal with a mosaic of procedures, response times and evidentiary standards – even if the headlines suggest that asset tracing has been “harmonised”.

What this means for insolvency and litigation strategy

Despite these limitations, the Directive is not merely a cosmetic change. For practitioners willing to adapt, it opens up new tactical options.

Some immediate strategic points to consider:

• Front‑loading asset tracing: early, coordinated requests to bank account registers and beneficial ownership databases across key Member States could become a standard first step once a main proceeding is opened, particularly where there are indications of pre‑insolvency asset movements.
• Linking tracing and avoidance actions: the Directive explicitly connects asset tracing to avoidance actions. Information obtained via registers can be used to build a factual basis for challenging suspect transactions, both domestically and abroad.
• Forum strategy for secondary proceedings: the relative ease or difficulty of obtaining asset information in a given Member State may become an additional factor when deciding whether to open secondary proceedings or where to focus enforcement efforts.
• Client expectations and pricing: for creditors and investors, the prospect of better information and higher recovery rates may influence how they assess risk and price cross‑border exposures, even if outcomes remain uneven from one jurisdiction to another.

At the same time, clients should be made aware that the Directive does not eliminate obstacles overnight. Complex structures, interposed entities and aggressive pre‑insolvency planning will still pose significant challenges. Sophisticated debtors will continue to exploit the remaining gaps and divergences between Member States.

A step forward, but not the last one

From a policy standpoint, Directive 2026/799 is an important acknowledgment that modern insolvency law cannot function effectively without robust asset tracing mechanisms. It creates an EU‑wide expectation that insolvency practitioners should have meaningful access to key financial and asset data.

Yet by choosing minimum harmonisation in an area where Member States’ laws and legal cultures differ so profoundly, the Directive stops short of delivering a fully coherent framework. It will reduce some of the most extreme asymmetries and close off the most obvious loopholes, but it will not make the EU a single, uniform space for asset tracing.

In the medium term, further steps seem almost inevitable. These might include more prescriptive rules on direct access by practitioners, tighter deadlines for registry responses, or clearer EU‑level guidance on how to balance insolvency needs with privacy and data protection. Each of these steps will require legal and political courage, as they touch on sensitive questions about financial transparency and national sovereignty.

For now, the message for EU‑wide insolvency and litigation practitioners is two‑fold:

• there will be new tools worth using and integrating into day‑to‑day practice;
• but success will still depend on understanding, and working within, the very different legal and cultural landscapes of each Member State.