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New EU Digitalisation Regulation: A Stepping Stone to Digitalised EU?
Author: Martina Ticic, assistant at the University of Rijeka, Faculty of Law and doctoral student funded by the Croatian Science Foundation (Hrvatska zaklada za znanost – HRZZ)
On 13 December 2023, two years after the first legislative proposal has been published, the new Regulation (EU) 2023/2844 of the European
Parliament and of the Council of 13 December 2023 on the digitalisation of judicial cooperation and access to justice in cross-border civil, commercial and criminal matters, and amending certain acts in the field of judicial cooperation (Digitalisation Regulation) has been adopted. While the process of digitalisation of judicial cooperation and cross-border procedures in the EU has been ongoing for some time already, the new Digitalisation Regulation represents a major step for advancing digitalisation practices in the EU.
Bahraini High Court on Choice of Court and Choice of Law Agreements
I. Introduction
It is widely recognized that choice of court and choice of law agreements are powerful tools for structuring and planning international dispute resolution. These agreements play an important role in “increasing legal certainty for the parties in cross-border transactions and reducing incentives for (the harmful version of) forum shopping.” (Alex Mills, Party Autonomy in Private International Law (CUP, 2018) p. 75). However, the realization of these objectives depends on the enforcement of the parties’ choice. Unfortunately, general practice in the MENA (North Africa and the Middle East) region shows that, with a few exceptions, the status quo is far from satisfactory. Choice-of-court agreements conferring jurisdiction on foreign courts are often disregarded or declared null and void. Similarly, the foreign law chosen as the governing law of a contract is often not applied because of the procedural status of foreign law as a matter of fact, the content of which must be ascertained by the party invoking its application. The recent judgment of the High Court of Bahrain (a first instance court in the Bahraini judicial system) in the Case No. 2/13276/2023/02 of 17 January 2024 is nothing but another example of this entrenched practice that can be observed in the vast majority of countries in the region.
U.S. Supreme Court Decides Great Lakes
On February 21, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Great Lakes Insurance SE v. Raiders Retreat Realty Company, LLC.
The question presented was whether, under federal admiralty law, a choice-of-law clause in a maritime contract can be rendered unenforceable if enforcement is contrary to the “strong public policy” of the U.S. state whose law is displaced. In a unanimous opinion authored by Justice Kavanaugh, the Court concluded that the answer to this question was no. It held that choice-of-law provisions in maritime contracts are presumptively enforceable as a matter of federal maritime law. It further held that while there are narrow exceptions to this rule, state public policy is not one of them.
News
RabelsZ 89 (2025): Issue 3
The latest issue of RabelsZ has just been released. It contains the contributions to the symposium in honor of Jürgen Basedow that was held in Hamburg in November 2024. The table of contents is available here. All content is Open Access: CC BY 4.0 and more articles are available Online First.
Eva-Maria Kieninger, Konrad Duden and Ralf Michaels, Preface to the Symposium Issue, pp. 409–410, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0046
Hannah L. Buxbaum, The New Unilateralism in EU Cross-Border Regulation: Objectives, Methods, Institution, oo. 411–431, https://doi.org/10.1628/rabelsZ-2025-0043
For years, Europe was a site of resistance to regulatory unilateralism, particularly as practiced by the United States. Today, though, there are signs of a robust unilateralism at work in EU regulatory practices. To some extent it simply mirrors practices adopted in the United States and elsewhere: Like other lawmakers, the EU has begun to act unilaterally where necessary to achieve effective regulation of its own markets and to protect local interests. In other respects, though, the new unilateralism in the EU presents quite differently. First, the EU increasingly uses its own legislation not to advance purely local regulatory interests, but rather to achieve international or global goals – classically a more multilateral objective. Second, under EU law individual regulations in particular substantive areas are embedded in a larger framework of norms and values that claim universal appeal. In both of these regards, the EU version of unilateralism appears more benign than purely »self-interested« unilateralism. It nevertheless raises important questions about the way that local laws and institutions are used to project regulatory power in the international arena. The goal of this article is to explore these questions. It begins by describing the characteristics of this new unilateralism, in terms of both its doctrinal foundations and its regulatory objectives. It then focuses on one particular mechanism: the adequacy regime established under EU data protection law.
Launch of the Bahrain International Commercial Court
The Bahrain International Commercial Court (BICC) was launched on 5 November 2025. It joins the long established Dubai International Financial Centre Courts, Abu Dhabi Global Market Courts and Qatar International Court and Dispute Resolution Centre in the Middle East as a specialist court devoted to resolving international commercial disputes and operating under special procedural rules.
The BICC was developed in partnership with the Singapore International Commercial Court (SICC). It shares many key features with the SICC such as a multinational bench, foreign counsel representation and use of the English language in proceedings. Of particular note is the appeal mechanism for BICC judgments; as discussed previously here, appeals from the BICC will be heard by the International Committee of the SICC.
ASADIP Conference Rio 2025 (report) and San Salvador 2026 date (20-23 October)
The ASADIP conference is an annual highlight of the discipline. The reports from the 2025 conference in Rio de Janeiro are now available, in English, Spanish, and Portuguese, here
And the location and date for the 2026 have been set for San Salvador, El Salvador, 20-23 October. See you there.