Article published - Does the Hague Choice of Court Convention 2005 apply to asymmetric jurisdiction clauses?

With the end of the Brexit transition period on 31 December 2020, and the lack of clarity as to whether the EU will consent to the UK's accession to the Lugano Convention, attention is focused more than ever on the Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements 2005. Hague 2005 is however subject to a number of limitations, not least that it applies only where there is an exclusive jurisdiction clause in favour of the court of a contracting state. The accepted view among most commentators is that “exclusive” for these purposes does not include asymmetric or one-way jurisdiction clauses of the sort often favoured by finance parties, but some recent English decisions have queried whether that is in fact the case.

Anna Pertoldi has published a post on Practical Law’s Dispute Resolution Blog in which she considers the position. Click here to read the post (or here for the Practical Law Dispute Resolution blog homepage). Or for more information on the impact of Brexit more generally on commercial litigation involving the English courts, see this previous post on Litigation Notes.