EU Commission: Survey on the Application of Brussels Ia Regulation

The EU Commission is seeking your input on the practical application of the Regulation on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters of 12 December 2012 (“Brussels Ia” or “Brussels Recast”). The questionnaire is addressed not only to bar associations and similar professional bodies, but also to individual practitioners.

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“The HCCH 2019 Judgments Convention: Cornerstones, Prospects, Outlook” – Conference, Bonn, 9/10 September 2022

Back in February 2020, one of the last pre-Pandemic posts on this blog was by Matthias Weller. Professor Weller introduced a conference on a topic at the very heart of this blog, namely the Hague Judgments Convention. The conference did of course not go ahead as planned in 2020, because nothing did. Nor did it take place in 2021, but we are all fairly optimistic that everything will work out the third time round. I suggest that you  mark 9 and 10 September 2022 in your diaries. Click here for details. Continue reading

Max Planck Institutes: Joint Opinion on Judicial Assistance Reforms

In February 2022, we covered the proposed legislation that would relax Germany’s position on the discovery of documents under the Hague Evidence Convention (see here). The draft bill that contained this proposal alongside a whole host of other issues has been reviewed in depth by two Max Planck Institutes (MPI), namely by the Hamburg Institute for Comparative and International Private Law and the Luxembourg Institute for International, European and Regulatory Procedural Law. The combined academic fire power was aimed at two bills in the field: Continue reading

EU Commission: Proposal on Cross-Border Videoconferencing in Court Hearings

When the pandemic started and court hearings by video became a real thing, German lawyers found, sometimes to their surprise, that the law was actually quite advanced: Already back in 2002, Section 128a ZPO was introduced to allow the conduct of court hearings using videoconferencing technology and the law was updated in 2013 (see our earlier post “Remote Courts in Germany” for details). The law in action has since caught up with the law on the books: Courts have been equipped with the necessary hardware and hearings by videoconferencing have become a regular feature in many court rooms across the country – and they are likely to stay in a post-pandemic world. However, there remains some uncertainty regarding the use of videoconferencing in a cross-border context.

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