Appeal to the Regional Court of Appeal

The period runs from service of the reasoned first-instance decision on the party, not from the date on which the decision was pronounced at the hearing. For foreign parties this makes the notification record the most important document in the file: it fixes the day on which the two weeks begin and it is what the appellate court examines when timeliness is disputed. Waiting for an informal copy of the decision does not postpone the period. Missing the deadline because notification dates were not tracked is one of the most common and least recoverable mistakes.

Final decisions whose monetary value falls below the threshold fixed in the Code of Civil Procedure are final as soon as they are given and cannot be taken to the Regional Court of Appeal. The threshold applicable on the date of the decision should be checked rather than assumed. Above the threshold, final decisions of the first instance courts are appealable. A tenfiz decision on a foreign judgment is subject to the ordinary appellate remedies, so it can be challenged by whichever party lost, the claimant seeking enforcement or the debtor resisting it.

Only to a limited extent. Although the Regional Court of Appeal reviews the facts as well as the law, the appeal is not a fresh trial, and the appellate courts generally limit new facts and evidence, so material that could have been presented at first instance should not be held back for the appellate stage. The appeal petition should therefore identify concrete errors in the first-instance decision and build on the record already created. Parties, and foreign parties in particular, should present their complete evidentiary case at first instance rather than holding material back for a later stage.

It depends on the nature of the decision. In a tenfiz action, the first-instance decision does not produce the effects needed for enforcement against assets until it becomes final, so a timely appeal keeps enforcement pending. For other categories of decision the effect of an appeal on enforcement depends on the type of judgment and the procedural rules that apply to it, and the position is not uniform. A party expecting to enforce, or to resist enforcement, should check the position for its specific type of decision before relying on either outcome.