INTRODUCTION

This chapter considers the ongoing negotiations of a Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (hereafter, ‘the Judgments Project’) at the Hague Conference on Private International Law (hereafter, ‘the HCCH’) from the perspective of its complementarity to the Brussels I Recast Regulation, which today still stands as the main pillar of the 50 year-old (or young) European Private International Law.

Euphemistically put, the Judgments Project has known its ups and downs since it was proposed as a new item for intergovernmental negotiations to the HCCH in 1992. It is, at the time of writing, still uncertain what the outcome of the final negotiations will be. For the purposes of this paper, however, we will base ourselves on the 2018 Draft Convention, leaving the discussions about open issues aside. This paper aims instead at situating the Judgments Project, from the perspective of the EU, as a component of the construction of the EU Civil Justice legal framework. For that purpose, it provides a succinct overview of the scope and main features of the draft Convention that will hopefully emerge as the new off spring of the Judgments Project. To illustrate some of the draft Convention's main features, four different scenarios (based on real cases) are discussed. Finally, some predictions about the road ahead are made, based on the author's personal conviction that it is essential, for the international legal community as a whole and thus for the EU and the European citizens in particular, that the Judgments Project is crowned with success.

THE JUDGMENTS PROJECT AS A COMPONENT OF THE EU CIVIL JUSTICE POLICY

Prima facie, the Judgments Project may appear to be peripheral to the primary objectives of the EU in the area of private international law. The ‘judicial cooperation in civil matters’ (or ‘private international law’ in more standard terms) that the EU progressively develops pursuant to Article 81 TFEU (and its predecessors), has principally generated Regulations, Directives and other EU legislation directed to the proper functioning of the internal market. Given that one of that internal market's main goals is the free movement of goods, services and economically active persons within the territory of the EU, the internal dimension of the Civil Justice policy has received priority attention in the initial decades of its development.