Towards a global Hague Convention on the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil or commercial matters

There is a certain irony in the fact that, when later this year the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments will see the light, the work that started in the 1960's with the 1965 Choice of Court and the 1971 Recognition and Enforcement Conventions will have come full circle: the Hague Conference will, once again, after having crafted an instrument on choice of court, adopt a Recognition and Enforcement Convention! Yet, the image of an upward spiral will hopefully do better justice to the outcome. If one compares the 1965 and 2005 Choice of Court Conventions, it is only fair to note that the former went only half way, in particular insofar as it did not unify the rules of recognition and enforcement of judgments but left these to national law, and it never came into force, whereas the 2005 Convention now binds 32 States, has been signed by the US and China, and is likely to attract more Parties in the future. 50. The reasons for the failure of the 1971 Convention have been set out supra 10.-13. The structure of the new Convention will hopefully be less complicated than that of its predecessor. A bilateralisation requirement should be avoided, or at least drafted in a way that makes the application of the Convention not unduly difficult. Contrary to the situation forty years ago, there is no competing (European or international) instrument available. On the contrary, through its membership of the Hague Conference (since 2007), the EU has acknowledged the importance of this organisation as a forum for negotiating global instruments. For the EU, the Judgments Project is now a priority project of the gradual construction of an external EU policy on judicial cooperation in civil and commercial matters. From a global perspective, the Convention will fulfill a long-felt need for a multilateral framework for the recognition and enforcement of judgments. The Convention will, as a whole, contribute to the aforementioned 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development which encourages the international community to "promote the rule of law at the national and international levels and ensure equal access to justice for all" (Sustainable Development Goal 16.3).45 in terms of its scope, if (for example) IP and or anti-trust matters were excluded, it may end up as a rather modest instrument, but that may be inevitable to attract worldwide participation. In the future, its substantive reach might also be broadened, through additional protocols.46 It will be very important to focus the energy of the Conference on the promotion and follow up on the implementation and application of the future Convention. This will require considerable efforts, from which work on a possible "traité double" (supra 2.) should not detract. After so many years of intense study, dialogue and negotiations, the 2019 Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters has the potential of meeting the need for a truly global common framework for the circulation of judgments in our emerging world society