Punitive damages are an important tool in the United States’ societal model which relies on private enforcement through tort litigation as a means to achieve public safety. In that sense they act as a reward to incentivise private plaintiffs to seek redress for their own violated interests, thereby contributing to the common good. Despite being under constant scrutiny, they have a strong foothold on the other side of the ocean.

The extra-compensatory institution of punitive damages has no official existence in the European Union. The state and not private persons are the prime actors in crafting and implementing social welfare policy. The governments of the European Member States attain public interest goals through regulation, state supervision and social security, rather than through the encouragement of private legal action. The only major exception to the express rejection of punitive damages can be found in England, the nation of their modern birthplace, which provides for an acknowledgment of exemplary damages in limited circumstances.

The expansion of global trade and intercontinental tourism increases the number of cross-border law suits. In such transnational litigation it is inevitable that a jurisdiction is faced with a legal institution that is alien to the substantive law of the forum. Punitive damages are such an institution. Private international law offers an interesting perspective as it forms a country's first line of defence against a remedy described as “the Trojan horse of the Americanisation of continental law”. A nation's private international law attitude indicates the country's level of tolerance towards a foreign concept unknown in its own legal system.

In applicable law and enforcement of judgments the openness of Civil Law jurisdictions is measured through the international public policy exception. This derivative from domestic public policy contains only the most fundamental values of the forum and is, therefore, narrower in scope than its internal counterpart. For service of process the Hague Service Convention introduces an autonomous notion (“the sovereignty or security of the state”) that is akin to the domestic international public exception. An investigation of the current private international law situation in the European Union reveals that the degree of receptiveness varies greatly depending on the area of private international law. 550.