INTRODUCTION

The effective cross-border recovery of debts is key to international trade and commerce and thus also to a joint internal market. Accordingly, the Treaty establishing the European Economic Community stated the objective, in the fourth indent of Art. 220, of simplifying the formalities governing reciprocal enforcement; this aim was implemented by the Brussels Convention on jurisdiction and the enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters. The Brussels Convention structured the substantive prerequisites for granting enforceability to an enforcement order originating in a different contracting state such that they took the form of grounds for refusal, standardising said prerequisites along with the intermediate proceedings that are to be pursued in the state of enforcement.

The Treaty of Amsterdam established the competence of the European Community for judicial cooperation in civil matters having cross-border implications (Art. 61(c), third indent of Art. 65(a) of the Treaty establishing the European Community (EC)). It was on the basis of this Treaty that the Brussels Convention was transformed into a regulation having direct application (Brussels I Regulation). In the process, the provisions were developed further; among other aspects, the cross-border enforceability of claims was facilitated – while upholding the fundamental approach taken by the relevant provisions – by streamlining the intermediate proceedings. However, the Member States shied away from fundamentally changing the paradigms. They did subsequently put in place additional legislative means that further supported cross-border debt recovery by enabling the acknowledgment of an enforcement instrument as a European enforcement order, by introducing a European order for payment procedure, and by introducing a European small claims procedure, all of which focused on uncontested or small (pecuniary) claims. These instruments were intended to either transfer the core of the intermediate proceedings to the Member State of origin (Regulation creating a European Enforcement Order for uncontested claims (EEO Regulation)) or to obviate such intermediate proceedings in their entirety (as was done by the Regulation creating a European order for payment procedure (EOP Regulation) and the Regulation establishing a European Small Claims Procedure (ESCP Regulation)).

Based on the competence established by Arts. 67(4) and 81(2)(a) of the TFEU, the Regulation on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters was reformed (to become Brussels Ibis Regulation).