Brussels, 05/04/2002 (Agence Europe) - Last week, using the written procedure, the Council adopted a confidential mandate for negotiating a global convention on the powers of courts and the decision of which court should rule on foreign civil and company law cases. The negotiating mandate sets out the European delegation's position of the round of negotiations at The Hague Conference on 22/24 April. The EU wants to keep its negotiating position secret, but all the same, it is known that the EU tends to oppose the United States in this area, the US preferring to restrict the convention to cases between professionals, but the EU preferring it to have much wider scope, encompassing consumers, for example. The Hague Conference is an international organisation with 59 member nations, including the EU, the US and Russia, that has been working on the convention since 1992. An initial diplomatic conference in June 2001 was unable to smooth over disagreements.