The Recognition of Judgments in the European Community: The Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Brussels Convention

This article is directed at two objectives. It will first provide, in Part I, an outline of the history of the Brussels Convention from its inception to the present day. It will examine the growth of the Convention from a vague undertaking of the six original Member States of the EC, through various treaties of accession and the 1988 Lugano Convention with the EFTA, and finally to the text currently in force. Part II will discuss the nature of the Convention and the philosophy behind it. The second purpose of this article is a more pragmatic one: to provide the practitioner with a working understanding of the way in which a judgment rendered in one European State may be recognized and enforced in another. In Part III, the article covers the general considerations applicable to the recognition and enforcement of judgments under the Convention, the subjects to which the Convention applies, and the four matters to which it does not apply.