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The Justice Initiative Frankfurt am Main 2017

Written by Prof. Dr. Dres. h.c. Burkhard Hess, Executive Director Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law

Against the backdrop of Brexit, an initiative has been launched to strengthen Frankfurt as a hot spot for commercial litigation in the European Judicial Area. On March 30, 2017, the Minister of Justice of the Federal State Hessen, Ms Kühne-Hörmann, organized a conference at which the Justice Initiative was presented. More  than 120 stakeholders (lawyers, judges, businesses) attended the conference. The original paper was elaborated by Professors Burkhard Hess (Luxembourg), Thomas Pfeiffer (Heidelberg), Christian Duve (Heidelberg) and Roman Poseck (President of the Frankfurt Court of Appeal). Here, we are pleased to provide an English translation of the position paper with some additional information on German procedural law for an international audience. The proposal has, as a matter of principle, been endorsed by the Minister of Justice. Its proposals are now being discussed and shall be implemented in the next months to come. The paper reads as follows: Read more

Paris, the Jurisdiction of Choice?

On January 17th, the President of the Paris Commercial Court (Tribunal de commerce) inaugurated a new international division.

The new division, which is in fact the 3rd division of the court (3ème Chambre), is to be staffed with nine judges who speak foreign languages, and will therefore be able to assess evidence written in a foreign language. For now, the languages will be English, German and Spanish, as one juge speaking Spanish and two speaking German are currently on the court.

In an interview to the Fondation de droit continental (Civil law initiative), the President of the Court explained that the point was to make French justice more competitive and attract international cases. It also made clear that France was following Germany’s lead, where several international divisions were established in 2009 in Hamburg and Cologne.

French Commercial Courts

It should be pointed out to readers unfamiliar with the French legal system that French commercial courts are not staffed with professional judges, but with members of the business community working part-time at the court (and for free). In Paris, however, many of these judges work in the legal department of their company, and are thus fine lawyers.

Also, French commercial courts (and French civil courts generally) virtually never hear witnesses, so the issue of the language in which they may address the court does not arise.

Some issues

So, the new international division will be able to read documents in several foreign languages. However, nothing suggests that parties or lawyers will be able either to speak, or to write pleadings, in any other language than French. Lawyers arguing these cases will still need to file their pleadings in French, and thus to translate them in English beforehand for their clients. Furthermore, the interview of the Court’s President seems to suggest that using a foreign language will not be a right for the parties. Quite to the contrary, it seems that it will not be possible if one of the parties disagrees, and demands documents be translated in French.

Will that be enough to attract additional commercial cases to Paris?

I wonder whether introducing class actions in French civil procedure would have been more efficient in this respect.

For the full interview of the Court’s President, see after the jump.

Read more

News

Rivista di diritto internazionale privato e processuale (RDIPP) No 2/2022: Abstracts

The second issue of 2022 of the Rivista di diritto internazionale privato e processuale (RDIPP, published by CEDAM) was just released. It features:

Costanza Honorati, Professor at the University Milan-Bicocca, Giovanna Ricciardi, Doctoral candidate at the University Milan-Bicocca, Violenza domestica e protezione cross-border (Domestic Violence and Cross-Border Protection) [in Italian]

Domestic violence has drawn increasing attention both from the lawmaker and legal scholars. Legal means to prevent domestic violence and protect women have been promoted and implemented at the national and supranational levels. This article concentrates on seeking and enforcing civil protection measures in cross-border family conflicts. Protective measures are often sought and taken in the State where the prospective victim (and often also the tortfeasor) is habitually resident. PIL issues are however rarely addressed. Regulation (EU) No 606/2013 on mutual recognition of protection measures in civil matters provides a useful instrument when the need for recognition and enforcement in a different Member State arises at a later stage. Less dealt with is the issue of selecting an appropriate ground for jurisdiction, which is not governed by the mentioned Regulation. The latter issue becomes especially relevant in the very peculiar case of protection measures to be issued in the so-called State of refuge when a mother challenges a situation of domestic violence as a ground for leaving the State of a child’s habitual residence and searches for protection elsewhere. The interplay between domestic violence and abduction cases, a situation quite frequent in practice but rarely addressed in legal literature, is further explored and dealt with.

Ilaria Viarengo, Professor at the University Milan, The Coordination of Jurisdiction and Applicable Law in Proceedings Related to Economic Aspects of Family Law

This article addresses the complex features and problems arising from the combined application of all European and international instruments dealing with divorce and the economic aspects of family law. The need to avoid litigation proceedings in different jurisdictions, entailing the duplication of proceedings and costs and the need to have divorce and all the financial aspects governed by the same law are of central importance from a practical point of view. This article provides an analysis of whether and to what extent these two needs can be satisfied with the combined application of the EU family law regulations at issue. Firstly, it deals with some general issues whose solution could have an impact on the coordination among all these instruments. Consequently, it examines the interplay among rules on jurisdiction and applicable law, including the role of party autonomy in pursuing coordination.

The following comment is also featured:

Curzio Fossati, Doctoral candidate at the University of Insubria, La residenza abituale nei regolamenti europei di diritto internazionale privato della famiglia alla luce della giurisprudenza della Corte di giustizia (Habitual Residence in EU Private International Law Regulations in Family Matters in View of the Case-Law of the Court of Justice) [in Italian]

This article deals with the concept of habitual residence, which is in widespread use in the EU Regulations in the field of family law. Firstly, the article gives an overview of these Regulations, and then it analyses the case-law of the CJEU on the criterion of habitual residence referred to children, deceased persons, and spouses. The contribution examines two fundamental elements of the concept of habitual residence identified both by CJEU and scholars: the objective element, i.e. a sufficiently stable presence of a person in a Member State, and the subjective element, i.e. the intention of the person concerned to establish the permanent or habitual centre of his or her interests in that place. The article also tries to identify the most suitable method of interpretation of the concept of habitual residence and, in particular, it investigates which approach is more desirable between a uniform approach (which fosters a uniform definition of habitual residence in EU law) and a functional one (which implies an interpretation that takes into account the aim of the disposition in which the concept is used). Ultimately, the Author endorses the solution adopted by the CJEU in the IB case, which combines the aforementioned approaches.

Finally, this issue features the following book review by Cristina M. Mariottini, Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for Procedural Law: Henry Deeb GABRIEL, Contracts for the Sale of Goods – A Comparison of U.S. and International Law, 3rd ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2022, pp. v-401.

A reform seeking to speed up the functioning of the EAPO information mechanism in Luxembourg

Carlos Santaló Goris, Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute Luxembourg for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law and Ph.D. candidate at the University of Luxembourg, offers an analysis of the reform recently approved in Luxembourg concerning the functioning of the information mechanism of the Regulation No 655/2014, establishing a European Account Preservation Order (“EAPO Regulation”). The EAPO Regulation and other EU civil procedural instruments are the object of study in the ongoing EFFORTS project, with the financial support of the European Commission. 

The EAPO Regulation introduced the first European civil interim measure that permits, as its name indicates, the provisional attachment of the debtors’ bank accounts in cross-border civil and commercial claims. Besides the temporary attachment of debtors’ funds, it also contains a special tool to search for the bank accounts containing those funds. This information mechanism is perhaps one of the main appeals of the EAPO. It has even inspired some national legislatures, for instance, the French one, to improve their domestic mechanisms to trace debtors’ assets in civil proceedings. Nonetheless, access to the EAPO’s information mechanism is more limited than access to the EAPO itself. Whereas creditors without a title can apply for an EAPO, they cannot submit a request to search for debtors’ bank accounts. This option is limited to creditors with a title, whether the title is enforceable or not.

Article 14 of the EAPO Regulation sets up the basic structure of the information mechanism. Provided creditors satisfy the necessary prerequisites to ask for the investigation of the debtors’ bank accounts, the court which examines the EAPO application sends a request for information to the Member State where the bank accounts are located. There, an information authority would be in charge of searching for debtors’ bank accounts and giving an answer to the requesting court.

The EAPO Regulation gives the Member States broad discretion in implementing the mechanism to investigate the debtors’ bank accounts. Article 14 only suggests three different methods that the Member States can choose to search the information about the debtors’ bank accounts. The first one consists of asking all the banks in the territory of the requested Member State to disclose whether they have the debtors’ bank accounts (Art. 14(5)(a) EAPO Regulation). According to the second method, the information about the debtors’ bank accounts is retrieved from the registries held by public administrations (Art. 14(5)(b) EAPO Regulation). Finally, according to the third method, courts may “oblige the debtor to disclose with which bank or banks in its territory he holds one or more accounts” (Art. 14(5)(c) EAPO Regulation).  The request to disclose the information is “accompanied by an in personam order by the court prohibiting the withdrawal or transfer” by the debtor “of funds held in his account or accounts up to the amount to be preserved by the Preservation Order” (Art. 14(5)(c) EAPO Regulation). This list of methods is not exhaustive, and the Member States are allowed to opt for any other method as long as it is “effective and efficient” and “not disproportionately costly or time-consuming” (Art. 14(5)(d) EAPO Regulation).

At the Luxembourgish domestic level, the EAPO information mechanism represented a major innovation. The Luxembourgish civil procedural system lacks an equivalent national tool to investigate debtors’ bank accounts. Therefore, the EAPO’s mechanism became (and still is) the only tool to trace debtors’ bank accounts during a civil procedure in Luxembourg. When a creditor requests a national provisional attachment order (saisie-arrêt), but ignores in which bank the debtors’ accounts are located, the attachment order must be sent to all the banks where those accounts may be held. The more banks the saisie-arrêt is sent to, the higher the chances of freezing the debtors’ funds. Such “fishing expeditions’ are costly. The saisie-arrêt is served to the banks through a bailiff (huissier). The more banks the saisie-arrêt is sent to, the higher the fee that the bailiff will charge.

Luxembourg appointed its national financial authority, the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (“CSSF”), as its national information authority for the EAPO information mechanism. In contrast to the costly “fishing expeditions” of the saisie-arrêt, the CSSF does not charge any fees for obtaining information about the debtors’ bank accounts.

The CSSF searches for the bank accounts by requesting that all the banks or branches of foreign banks operating in Luxembourg disclose if they hold the debtors’ accounts (Art. 14(5)(a) EAPO Regulation). Until September 2022, this request was sent by regular mail to all those entities. Banks were given 20 days to reply to the CSSF. Those 20 days, plus the time it takes to send the request by mail to the banks and receive their answers, explain why it takes at least one month until the CSSF can reply to the court which submitted the original information request.

However, from 1 September 2022, the request for information is sent through an online platform, the Guichet numérique eDesk (Circulaire CSSF 22/819). Banks operating in Luxembourg are required to join this platform. Thanks to this reform, the CSSF will be able to obtain information about the debtors’ bank accounts faster. It also ensures better monitoring of the answers provided by the banks. Overall, this reform enhances the functioning of the EAPO’s information mechanism at the Luxembourgish level and is in line with the EAPO Regulation, which favours the swift transmission of documents (Recital 24 Regulation).

Virtual Workshop on September 20: Hisashi Harata on Foreign-Corporation Regulations and Private International Law

On Tuesday, September 20, 2022, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute will host its 25th monthly virtual workshop Current Research in Private International Law at 11:00 a.m. -12:30 p.m. (CEST). Prof. Hisashi Harata (University of Tokyo) will speak, in English, about the topic

“Foreign-Corporation Regulations and Private International Law: With a Case Study on Derivative Action”.

The globalization of enterprise organization as well as activities causes more serious labour issues, environmental issues, human rights issues and so on. The corporate law rules on duties and responsibilities of corporate directors are regarded as a tool for corporate governance and
compliance.
Based on the current position for the lex incorporationis as well as the internal-affairs doctrine, the breach of duties and responsibilities of directors and the shareholder’s standing for derivative action would be ruled by the lex incorporationis, except for the application of overriding mandatory rules of lex fori.
However, the existence of foreign-company regulations in different jurisdictions like California, New York, Hongkong, Netherland etc. might lead us to a theoretical reflection, as they could impose regulations severer than lex incorporationis on directors and there is no room for such regulations of third countries other than lex incorporationis and lex fori to be applied within the conventional framework of P.I.L.
This presentation will shed lights on this theoretical issue, introducing practical case-study analysis on derivative action, and suggest several problematic points to be tackled in further studies.

The presentation will be followed by open discussion. All are welcome. More information and sign-up here.

If you want to be invited to these events in the future, please write to veranstaltungen@mpipriv.de.