INTRODUCTION

The second-generation Regulations on European civil procedural law (hereafter: the Regulations) all are generally applied in the practice of the Belgian legal order. The legal grounds on which these Regulations are applied vary. The EOP, EEO, and ESCP Regulations have not been accompanied with supplementing legislation and thus are directly applicable in Belgium on the basis of Art. 288 TFEU. The EAPO Regulation, however, has been officially ‘embedded’ into the Belgian legal order by a legislative act.

By embedding the EAPO Regulation, the legislator has chosen to extend the procedure to internal Belgian cases as well. The EOP, EEO, and ESCP Regulations only apply to cross-border cases.

The frequency of application of the Regulations in Belgium varies. Results obtained from interviews conducted and an analysis of Belgian case law indicate that the EEO and EOP Regulations have been most frequently applied, although not in many cases. The ESCP and EAPO Regulations have been applied in fewer cases.

For the purposes of methodology, it is important to note that, in executing the IC2BE project, we have been able to collect more data from the Flemish and Brussels regions of Belgium than from the Walloon region. This holds true for both the interviews and the available case law.

We have interviewed 26 legal practitioners: 11 judges, nine lawyers, four enterprises, and two consumer organisations. 10 of the 11 judges are active in the Flemish and Brussels region, whereas only one judge is located in the Walloon region. The rest of the target groups are all located in the Flemish and Brussels regions.

Regarding the case law, we found 44 publicly available cases in which the Regulations were subject of debate. 24 cases consider the EEO Regulation, 18 cases the EOP Regulation, and two cases the ESCP Regulation. No case law was found for the EAPO Regulation, whereas various interviewed seizure judges indicated that they have applied the EAPO Regulation in their practice.

The databases that were used were mainly www.jura.be and www.jurisquare.be. We have also obtained case law by contacting the competent courts, and we subsequently made sure these judgments were published in the relevant journals. In Belgium, case law is not systematically published, and not many cases are readily available to the public.