EU's revised proposals for enforcement of judgments post-Brexit

On 15 March, the European Commission published a revised version of the draft withdrawal agreement it had previously published on 28 February 2018 (see our summary of the original terms relating to jurisdiction, choice of law and enforcement of judgments here). The revised version contains a significant change regarding continuation of the current arrangements for enforcement of judgments, bringing the EU's position closer to that of the UK on this issue.

The EU's initial draft agreement provided that the current rules on enforcement of judgments, under the Recast Brussels Regulation, would apply only to judgments given before the end of any transition period. In contrast, the revised draft provides that those rules would apply so long as the proceedings were instituted before the end of that period.

This is a positive step but, in contrast to the UK's position, there is no provision for the current rules on enforcement to apply where a jurisdiction agreement was entered into before the end of the transition period, if proceedings were commenced after it. 

A further version of the draft withdrawal agreement has been published today (19 March) indicating which areas of text are agreed and which remain subject to discussion (though as noted in our separate blog post on the key areas of agreement, linked here, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed). Discussions are said to be ongoing in relation to the provisions on jurisdiction and enforcement, in contrast to the provisions on choice of law which form part of the text marked as having been agreed.