INTRODUCTION

Addressing the question of regulatory competition in civil procedure among the Member States at the time when the Brussels Convention is turning 50 might seem like raising an inexistent problem at the wrong time. First, how could Member States engage in regulatory competition at the civil procedure level when international jurisdiction, parallel procedures, jurisdiction clauses and recognition and enforcement issues are regulated by common rules inherited from the charming grandmother celebrated in this book (i.e. the Brussels Convention, mother of Regulation Brussels I and later grandmother of the Recast, without counting other off spring like Brussels IIa, etc.)? Second, why would Member States engage in regulatory competition, especially at the civil procedure level, in order to attract more litigation to their own courts? Do they really wish to increase the overload of their national courts? These two sensible questions tend to doubt the reality of regulatory competition. And indeed they also raise a more fundamental question: is justice or civil procedure an object that can be submitted to regulatory or normative competition at all?

A few statements collected here and there in policy declarations or in academia tend rather to show that regulatory competition at the civil procedure level is raging.