Brussels, 10/06/2014 (Agence Europe) - In Luxembourg on Friday 6 June, the justice ministers of the EU gave their partial approval to the regulation to modernise the rules on corporate insolvency, which will create a framework for the bankruptcy of cross-border companies, allowing them to continue to operate and save jobs, the Greek justice minister, Charalambos Athanasiou, and the Commissioner for Justice, Viviane Reding, announced the same day. These new rules aim to allow companies to restructure more easily, to facilitate the repayment of credit, to determine the competent jurisdiction when proceedings cover more than one member state and to inform creditors of the situation of companies and the insolvency proceedings. Every year, around 50,000 cross-border companies go bust, affecting 1.7 million jobs, the Commission explains in a press release. Trialogue meetings will start under the new legislative period. The EP adopted its position in February of this year.
The changes made by the Commission's proposal are technical in nature: the scope of the regulation (originally dating from 2000) has been expanded by a new definition of insolvency proceedings which includes, for example, notions of pre-insolvency proceedings or “hybrid” proceedings. The other amendments relate to the rules to determine the competent jurisdiction and so-called “secondary” insolvency proceedings. The Commission had the backing of the Parliament on the following aspects: the extension of the rules to cover bailout procedures, the creation of a European internet insolvency register system, the possibility of avoiding multiple proceedings and insolvency rules for groups of companies. (SP)