On Tuesday, 4 May, the European Commission concluded that the European Union should not give its consent to the accession of the United Kingdom to the 2007 Lugano Convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters. In its view, the appropriate framework for the future relationship between the EU and the United Kingdom in these areas is that of the Hague Conventions.
The United Kingdom had, in fact, applied to accede to the Lugano Convention on 8 April 2020 and needed to secure the unanimous agreement of all contracting parties within a maximum of one year to do so.
Among other things, the Lugano Convention extends the benefits of the Community framework on the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters to the EFTA States. The European Commission insists that, for the EU, it is a flanking measure of the internal market. Furthermore, the participating countries all have “a particularly close regulatory integration with the EU”.
For all other non-EU countries, the European Commission explains that it has always opted for cooperation on the basis of the multilateral Hague Conventions, namely the 2005 Choice of Court Convention and the 2019 Judgments Convention.
“The United Kingdom is a third country without a special link to the internal market. Therefore, there is no reason for the European Union to depart from its general approach in relation to the United Kingdom”, writes the European Commission.
For that matter, it points out that the 2019 Political Declaration on the framework for the future relationship between the EU and the United Kingdom refers to the framework of the Hague Conventions and that the United Kingdom acceding to the Lugano Convention is not mentioned either in the Political Declaration or in any other joint EU-UK document on the framework of the future relationship.
The European Parliament and the Council of the EU will now be able to express their thoughts on the European Commission’s assessment before the EU’s decision is formally communicated.
See the European Commission’s communication: https://bit.ly/2QLWZrI (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)