L’Efficacité Internationale des Jugements

Abstract

Pursuing a policy of maximum mutual confidence and automatic recognition of judgments since 2000, the lawmakers of the European Union have caused concern that the traditional ideas and techniques of private international law (a transboundary cooperation among “equals”) might be abandoned in favour of a centralised federal system of justice, in which the judges of one State may render decisions that the organs of the other States must recognise and enforce without exception. The various controversies caused by the recast of the Brussels I Regulation have permitted the drafters to reorient these goals and policies and to give them a new legal appearance. In the new Chapter III of the recast Regulation (on recognition and enforcement of judgments), the formalities of the exequatur were abolished without also taking the public policy control and the possibility of collateral attacks away from the recognition State. The system is evolving toward mutual trust and reasonable assimilation of domestic and foreign judgments, which translates into increased effectiveness abroad of foreign judgments with the possibility of a later finding of non-enforceability in the recognition State. The new regime of inter-European effectiveness should be seen as a valuable model ; it should be possible to propagate it in the context of other European regulations on judicial cooperation, which could in turn contribute to the emergence of a common system that is convincing and worth exporting.