Flux européens

Curto / Parlement
Statut des fonctionnaires
Le Tribunal de l’UE condamne le Parlement européen et la BEI à verser chacun 10 000 euros de dommages-intérêts à des agents victimes de harcèlement moral

[2018] SGHCR 8 Ermgassen v Sixcap Financials to my knowledge is the first recognition and enforcement by any court under the 2005 Choice of Court Convention. Together with the 28 EU Member States (and the EU itself), Singapore, with Mexico, are the 30 States for which the Convention has entered into force.

In his decision for the High Court, Colin Seow AR recognises a High Court ex parte summary judgment, taking the process to the Hague motions: whether the issue is civil and commercial; whether choice of court was concluded in favour of the courts having issued the judgment; and pointing to the UK’s membership of the Convention and to counsel for the plaintiff having been heard at the London High Court hearing: this makes the judgment one on the merits, not just a judgment in absentia (of the defendant: a Singapore-domiciled company). Of note is Seow AR’s flexible approach to the requirement to produce certified copies of the judgment (at 23 ff).

Geert.

 

The Goldman Sachs Group / Commission
Concurrence
Le Tribunal de l’UE confirme les amendes de plus de 300 millions d’euros infligées par la Commission aux principaux producteurs européens et asiatiques de câbles électriques à (très) haute tension pour leur participation à une entente mondiale

Tjebbes e.a.
Citoyenneté européenne
L’avocat général Mengozzi propose à la Cour de juger que la perte automatique de la nationalité néerlandaise, qui entraîne la perte de la citoyenneté de l’Union, pour les mineurs résidant en dehors de l’Union européenne est incompatible avec le droit de l’Union

Banger
Citoyenneté européenne
Lorsqu’un citoyen de l’Union retourne dans son État membre d’origine, ce dernier est tenu de favoriser l’entrée et le séjour du partenaire non-UE avec lequel ce citoyen a une relation durable

Autriche / Commission
Aide d'État
Le Tribunal de l’UE confirme la décision par laquelle la Commission a approuvé les aides du Royaume-Uni en faveur de la centrale nucléaire de Hinkley Point C

Advocate-General Bot opined on 4 July 2018 in the case of C-308/17 Leo Kuhn, domiciled at Vienna, who had purchased through an Austrian bank, Greek sovereign bonds. Pursuant to a forced exchanged /haircut carried out by Greece in March 2012, the bonds were replaced with new bonds with a lower nominal value. Mr Kuhn sued to have the initial borrowing terms enforced.

The Advocate-General is of course aware of the similarities with Fahnenbrock – in which he himself had also opined but was not followed by the Court. He first of all points out the similarities between the service Regulation and the Brussels I Recast (both e.g. limiting their scope of application to ‘civil and commercial’ matters), however also flags the specific recitals (in particular: recital 12) suggesting that in the context of the services Regulation the analysis needs to be done swiftly hence only cases which prima facie fall outside the scope of application (including where they manifestly (see the dictum of Fahnenbrock and para 50 of the AG’s Opinion in Kuhn) are not covered by that Regulation.

Coming next to the consideration of the application of ‘civil and commercial’, the facts of this case reflect very much the hybrid nature of much of sovereign debt litigation. In my view yes, the haircut took place within the wider institutional nature of Greece’s debt negotiations with the EU. Yet the ‘collective action clause’ (CAC) which was not part of the original terms and conditions (there was no CAC in the original lex causae, Greek law, but there is one in the newly applicable lex causae, English law: at 63 of the Opinion), was negotiated with the institutional holders of the bond and crammed down the minority holders like Mr Kuhn (at 66). The AG suggest that this does not impact on the qualification of the changes being ‘immediate and direct’, this being the formula employed by the Court in Fahnenbrock.

I am not so sure of the latter but it will be up to the CJEU to decide.

The Advocate General note bene subsequently ‘completes the analysis’ in case the CJEU disagrees with this view, and finds that if the issue is civil and commercial, it can be litigated under Article 7(1)’s rule on special jurisdiction for contractual obligations (the AG at para 88 ff distinguishes the case from C-375/13 Kolassa (in which the CJEU saw no contractual bond between the issuer of the bonds and the acquirer on the secondary market), the obligation at issue, he suggests, having to be performed in Greece. As for the latter element, the Advocate General does refer for the determination of the place of performance to the initially applicable law: Greek law, leaving the later lex causae, English law, undiscussed.

Whether the Court will follow the AG remains of course to be seen.

Geert.

 

I was at the Belgian Parliament yesterday for a hearing on the BIBC, following publication of the Government’s draft bill. For those of you who read Dutch, my notes are attached. We were limited to two pages of comments – the note is succinct.

An important change vis-a-vis the initial version (on which I commented here) is that the Court will now be subject to Belgian private international law (including primacy of EU instruments) for choice of law, rather than being able to pick the most appropriate law (arbitration panel style). That brings the court firmly within Brussels I. Also note my view and references on the Court being able to refer to the CJEU for preliminary review.

Geert.

 

Jehovan todistajat
PDON
Une communauté religieuse, telle que celle des témoins de Jéhovah, est responsable, conjointement avec ses membres prédicateurs, du traitement des données à caractère personnel collectées dans le cadre d’une activité de prédication de porte-à-porte

In C-1/17 Petronas Lubricants, the CJEU held end of June, entirely justifiably, that assigned counterclaims may be brought by the employer in the forum chosen by the employee under (now) Article 20 ff Brussels I Recast to bring his claim. In the case at issue, the employer had only obtained the claim by assignment, after the employee had initiated proceedings.

The Court pointed to the rationale underlying Article 22(1), which mirrors all other counterclaim anchor provisions in the Regulation: the sound administration of justice. That the counterclaim is merely assigned, is irrelevant: at 28:  ‘…provided that the choice by the employee of the court having jurisdiction to examine his application is respected, the objective of favouring that employee is achieved and there is no reason to limit the possibility of examining that claim together with a counter-claim within the meaning of Article 20(2)’ (Brussels I, GAVC).

Evidently the counterclaim does have to meet the criteria recently re-emphasised in Kostanjevec.

Geert.

(Handbook of) EU private international law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2, Heading 2.2.8.3.

Is it compatible with Article 38(1) Brussels I (and the equivalent provisions in the Brussels I Recast) to apply a time limit which is laid down in the law of the State in which enforcement is sought, and on the basis of which an instrument may no longer be enforced after the expiry of a particular period, also to a functionally comparable instrument issued in another Member State and recognised and declared enforceable in the State in which enforcement is sought?

A preservation order had been obtained in Italy. It had been recognised in Germany. However applicant then failed to have it enforced within a time-limit prescribed by the lex fori executionis.

On 20 June Szpunar AG in C‑379/17 Società Immobiliare Al Bosco opined (Opinion not yet available in English) that the lex fori executionis’ time limits must not obstruct enforcement. Moreover, he suggests that his view is not impacted by the changes to exequatur in the Brussels I Recast, and that his Opinion, based on the effet utile of the Brussels regime, has appeal even outside the case at issue (in which Italian law has a similar proviso).

A small but significant step in the harmonisation process of European civil procedure.

Geert.

(Handbook of) EU Private International Law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2, Heading 2.2.16

 

In [2018] EWHC 1670 (Comm) BNP Paribas v TRM, the High Court essentially had to hold on its jurisdiction in the face of competing choice of court clauses in an ISDA MAster Agreement (the courts of England; and lex contractus English law) and the attached Financing Agreement (the courts of Turin).

Knowles J dissected the agreements in relation to the claims made by the parties (again highlighting the relevance of formulation of claims): at 27: where, as here, there is more than one contract and the contracts contain jurisdiction clauses in favour of the courts of different countries, the court is faced with a question of construction or interpretation. And at 54: ‘The parties agreed jurisdiction in favour of the English Court under the Master Agreement. The fact that TRM further committed itself in the Financing Agreement to comply with its commitments under the Master Agreement does not mean that commitments under the Master Agreement and swap transaction are any the less subject to the jurisdiction agreed under the Master Agreement, or any the less able to be adjudicated upon and enforced by proceedings in England.’

Application to reject jurisdiction of the English Courts dismissed.

Geert.

 

The Court of Appeal in [2018] EWCA Civ 1532 has confirmed the High Court’s approach in [2017] EWHC 371 (QB) AAA et al v Unilever and Unilever Tea Kenya ltd, holding that there is no good arguable case (the civil law notion of fumus boni iuris comes closes, as Bobek AG notes in Feniks) against Unilever, which could then be used to anchor the case in the English jurisdiction.

Pro memoria: jurisdiction against Unilever is clear, following Article 4 Brussels I Recast. That Regulation’s anchor mechanism however is not engaged for Article 7(1) does not apply against non-EU based defendants. It is residual English private international law that governs this issue.

Appellants appeal in relation to the High Court’s ruling that neither Unilever nor UTKL (the Kenyan subsidiary) owed the appellants a duty of care. Unilever has put in a respondent’s notice to argue that the judge should have found that there was no duty of care owed by Unilever on the additional ground that, contrary to her view, there was no proximity between Unilever and the appellants in respect of the damage suffered by them, according to the guidance in Chandler v Cape Plc. Unilever and UTKL also sought to challenge that part of the judgment in which the judge held that, if viable claims in tort existed against Unilever (as anchor defendant) and UTKL, England is the appropriate place for trial of those claims. Unilever also cross-appealed in relation to a previous case management decision by the judge, by which she declined an application by Unilever that the claim against it should be stayed on case management grounds, until after a trial had taken place in Kenya of the appellants claims against UTKL.

The legal analysis by Sales LJ takes a mere five paragraphs (para 35 onwards). Most of the judgment is taken up by an (equally succinct) overview of risk management policies within the group.

At 35 Sales LJ notes ‘Having set out the relevant factual background in relation to the proximity issue (i.e. whether the appellants have any properly arguable case against Unilever in the light of Chandler v Cape Plc and related authorities), the legal analysis can proceed much more shortly. It is common ground that principles of English law govern this part of the case.‘

– the ‘common ground’ presumably being lex loci incorporationis.

This is an interesting part of the judgment for I find it by no means certain that English law should govern this part of the case. In one of my chapters for professor Vinuales’ en Dr Lees’ forthcoming OUP book on comparative environmental law, I expand on that point.

The long and the short of the argument is that Unilever did not intervene in the affairs of its subsidiary in a more intensive way than a third party would have done. Reference at 37 is made to the contrasting examples given by Sir Geoffrey Vos in Okpabi, ‘One can imagine … circumstances where the necessary proximity could be established, even absent the kind of specific facts that existed in Vedanta … Such a case might include the situation, for example, where a parent required its subsidiaries or franchisees to manufacture or fabricate a product in a particular way, and actively enforced that requirement, which turned out to be harmful to health. One might suggest a food product that injured many, but was created according to a prescriptive recipe provided by the parent. …’

and, at 38, to the raison d’être of mother /daughter structures,

“… it would be surprising if a parent company were to go to the trouble of establishing a network of overseas subsidiaries with their own management structures it if intended itself to assume responsibility for the operations of each of those subsidiaries. The corporate structure itself tends to militate against the requisite proximity …

– subject evidently to proof of the opposite in the facts at issue (a test seemingly not met here).

Geert.

(Handbook of) European Private International Law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 8, Heading 8.3.

Is the actio pauliana by a Polish company against a Spanish company, which had bought immovable property from the former’s contracting party, one relating to ‘contract’ within the meaning of Article 7(1) Brussels I Recast?

Bobek AG Opined in C-337/17 Feniks v Azteca on 21 June. His Opinion features among others a legal history class on the action pauliana, and eventually a justifiable conclusion: the action is not one in contract. In C-115/88 Reichert I the Court held that the French civil law actio pauliana does not fall within exclusive jurisdiction concerning rights in rem in immovable property (Article 24(1). Soon afterwards, the Court added in C-261/90 Reichert II that the same actio pauliana was neither a provisional measure nor an action bringing proceedings concerned with the enforcement of a judgment. It was also not a matter relating to tort, delict or quasi-delict.

That left only the potential for a forum contractus to be decided.

The AG reviews a number of arguments to come to his decision. One of those I find particularly convincing: at 62: assuming that the applicability of the head of jurisdiction for matters relating to a contract were to be contemplated, the question that immediately arises is which of the two contracts potentially involved should be taken as relevant? To which of the two contracts would an actio pauliana in fact relate? Among others (at 69-70) Sharpston AG’s Opinion in Ergo is discussed in this respect and the AG in my view is right when he dismisses the contractual relations at issue as an anchor point.

At 69 the AG also adds a knock-out point which could logically have come at the very beginning of the Opinion:

‘it should also be added and underlined that both approaches outlined above fail to satisfy the requirement of ‘obligation freely assumed by one party towards another’, [the AG refers to Handte, GAVC] that is by the Defendant towards the Applicant. Even if the case-law of this Court does not require that there is identity between the parties to the proceeding and to the respective contract, it appears difficult to consider that the mere filing of an actio pauliana creates a substantive-law relationship between the Applicant and the Defendant resulting from, for example, some kind of legal subrogation founded by an act of COLISEUM (as the Applicant’s initial debtor).’

Readers further may want to take note of para 92: the AG’s view to treat the power of recitals with caution. The AG ends at 97-98 with a robust defence of the Brussels regime, with specific reference to the common law (footnotes omitted):

‘What has to be sought is a principled answer that applies largely independently of the factual elements in an individual case. While fully acknowledging and commending the attractive flexibility of rules such as forum(non) conveniens that allow for derogation in the light of the facts of a specific case, the fact remains that the structure and the logic of the Brussels Convention and Regulations is indeed built on different premises. What is understandably needed in a diverse legal space composed of 28 legal orders are ex ante reasonably foreseeable, and thus perhaps somewhat inflexible rules at times, and less of an ex post facto explanation (mostly as to why one declared oneself competent) heavily dependent on a range of factual elements.

All in all, in the current state of EU law, actio pauliana seems to be one of the rare examples that only allows for the applicability of the general rule and an equally rare confirmation of the fact that ‘… there is no obvious foundation for the idea that there should always or even often be an alternative to the courts of the defendant’s domicile’. ‘

 

A solid opinion with extra reading for the summer season (on the Pauliana).

Geert.

Generalstaatsanwaltschaft (Conditions de détention en Hongrie)
DFON
L’avocat général Campos Sánchez-Bordona propose à la Cour de déclarer que l’existence, dans l’État d’émission d’un mandat d’arrêt européen, de voies de recours judiciaires permettant de contester d’éventuels traitements inhumains ou dégradants constitue un élément important pour écarter le risque de tels traitements, de sorte que, dans un tel cas, il n’existerait en principe pas de circonstances exceptionnelles pouvant justifier l’inexécution de ce mandat

Kuhn
Espace de liberté, sécurité et justice
L’avocat général Bot propose à la Cour de justice de juger que le règlement « Bruxelles I bis » n’est pas applicable pour déterminer quelle juridiction d’un État membre est compétente pour statuer sur les demandes formées contre l’État grec par un particulier détenteur d’obligations souveraines grecques suite à leur échange forcé dans des conditions et des circonstances exceptionnelles

Wirth e.a.
Transport
En cas de retard important d’un vol, la compagnie aérienne à qui le versement de l’indemnisation due aux passagers incombe n’est pas celle qui a donné en location l’appareil et l’équipage ayant été utilisé, mais celle qui a décidé de réaliser le vol

Planta Tabak
Liberté d'établissement
L’avocat général Saugmandsgaard Øe propose à la Cour de juger que la large interdiction de vente des produits du tabac contenant un arôme caractérisant est conforme au principe d’égalité de traitement

Commission / Slovaquie
Droit institutionnel
Pour avoir tardé à mettre en œuvre le droit de l’Union sur la mise en décharge des déchets, la Slovaquie est condamnée à une somme forfaitaire d’un million d’euros et à une astreinte de 5 000 euros par jour de retard

Keramag Keramische Werke e.a. / Commission
Concurrence
Le Tribunal maintient l’amende de 57 millions d’euros infligée à Sanitec Europe et à ses filiales dans le cadre de l’entente sur le marché des installations sanitaires pour salles de bains