Reforms to Brussels Regulation now finalised

On 6 December the Council of EU Justice Ministers adopted proposed reforms to Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (the Brussels Regulation). The changes had been proposed by the European Commission in December 2010 (see post) but were significantly revised before being approved by the European Parliament (on 20 November) and the Council.

The new Regulation (No 1215/2012) will come into force 20 days after its publication in the Official Journal of the EU, expected in a few weeks’ time, but will not apply for another two years after that date. So it will be early 2015 before we see how the changes play out in practice. The key changes are as follows:

1. Making EU member state judgments immediately enforceable across the EU without the need for an intermediate registration process in the enforcing state (i.e. abolishing the so-called “exequatur” procedure).
2. Strengthening jurisdiction agreements by requiring member state courts to stay proceedings where there is an exclusive jurisdiction agreement in favour of another member state’s court and that court has also been seised of proceedings, thereby defusing “torpedo” actions.
3. Extending the rules relating to jurisdiction agreements to apply where neither party is EU-domiciled, and extending the rules relating to consumers and employees to apply to non-EU domiciled traders and employers.
4. Clarifying that there is an absolute exclusion of arbitration from the ambit of the Regulation, and that exclusion also extends to court proceedings surrounding or in support of arbitration.

The first three of these changes are discussed in more detail on our Litigation Notes blog. For more detail on the fourth, see this post on our arbitration blog.