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Edited by Delphine Porcheron, Mélanie Schmitt and Juliette Lelieur

The University of Strasbourg is organizing workshop series on the protection of Human Rights in transnational situations. The research is conducted in criminal law, labour law, and private international law. After the first meeting which took place last January with the presence of Horatia Muir Watt, Dominique Ritleng and Patrick Wachsmann, the second one will be held in Strasbourg on June 5, focusing on civil and environmental liabilities and private international law.

 

Speakers include :

• Bénédicte Girard, University of Strasbourg
• Marie-Pierre Camproux, University of Strasbourg
• Pauline Abadie, University of Paris Sud
• Fabien Marchadier, University of Poitiers
• Patrick Kinsch, University of Luxembourg, Attorney at law Luxembourg
• Louis d’Avout, University of Paris II
• Jean-Sylvestre Bergé, University of Lyon III
• Caroline Kleiner, University of Strasbourg

For more information click here.

Engagement solennel devant la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne de quatre nouveaux membres de la Cour des comptes européenne

Renvoi

Both the English and French versions of the HCCH Draft Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments have been just uploaded onto the Hague Conference website (< www.hcch.net >). See News and Events here.

This text will form the basis of the discussions at the Diplomatic Session meeting in 2019.

David Restrepo Amariles (HEC Paris), Eva Mouial Bassilana (Université Côte d’Azur) and Matteo Winkler (HEC Paris) have posted on SSRN an article titled The Impact of the French Doctrine of Significant Imbalance on International Business Transactions. The paper is forthcoming on the Journal of Business Law.

The abstract reads as follows.

This article examines the concept of “significant imbalance” (SI) under French law and its impact on international business transactions. “Significant imbalance” is a legal standard meant to assess whether a contractual clause is unfair (abusive). Although initially restricted to consumer law, it has been extended to general contract law with the implementation of a reform entered into force on 1 October 2016. Previously, the Commercial Court of Paris in the ruling Ministry of Economy v Expedia, Inc (2015) had qualified SI as an “overriding mandatory provision” (“loi de police”) under Regulation 593/2008 on the applicable law to contractual obligations (Rome I). As a consequence, SI became operative in respect of international contracts despite an express choice of a foreign governing law made by the parties to the transaction. This article argues that, as a result of Expedia and the 2016 reform, French courts can interfere with international business transactions by striking down contractual terms that they deem unfair according to the SI standard. The analysis focuses on two key issues. On the one hand, notwithstanding recent judicial precedents, SI still fails to provide a reliable test for predicting which clauses or contracts are at risk of being deemed unfair. On the other hand, the legal arsenal supporting the French legislator’s disapproval of SI allocates great power to French courts and the French Government to pursue tort lawsuits against foreign companies allegedly oppressing their commercial partners with SI clauses. Empirical evidence shows that these actions are highly successful compared with those commenced by private actors. The article concludes that all these aspects, together with SI’s turbulent case law throughout the years, will give rise to uncertainty in international business transactions and may eventually disadvantage France in the global competition in such a field.

Korwin-Mikke / Parlement
Droit institutionnel
Le Tribunal annule les décisions du bureau du Parlement européen infligeant des sanctions à l’eurodéputé Korwin-Mikke en raison de propos tenus dans l’hémicycle

Hassan
Espace de liberté, sécurité et justice
Lorsqu’une personne se rend dans un État membre après avoir introduit une demande de protection internationale dans un autre État membre, le premier État membre ne peut pas décider de la transférer vers le second État membre avant que celui-ci n’ait donné son accord à la demande de reprise en charge

Wind Tre
Liberté d'établissement
L’avocat général Campos Sánchez-Bordona propose à la Cour de juger que le simple fait de ne pas informer l’utilisateur de la pré-installation de services de messagerie vocale et d’accès à Internet sur une carte SIM destinée à être insérée dans un téléphone intelligent ne constitue pas une pratique commerciale déloyale ou agressive lorsque l’utilisateur a été préalablement informé des modalités d’accès et du prix de ces services

Valcheva
Espace de liberté, sécurité et justice
La notion de « droit de visite » comprend le droit de visite des grands-parents à l’égard de leurs petits-enfants

Wegener
Environnement et consommateurs
Le droit à indemnisation pour retard important d’un vol s’applique aussi aux vols avec correspondances vers un État tiers faisant escale en dehors de l’UE

Commission / Italie
Environnement et consommateurs
Pour avoir tardé à mettre en œuvre le droit de l’Union sur la collecte et le traitement des eaux urbaines résiduaires, l’Italie est condamnée à une somme forfaitaire de 25 millions d’euros et à une astreinte de plus de 30 millions d’euros par semestre de retard

IR
SOPO
Selon l’avocat général Wathelet, l’interdiction de discrimination en fonction de la religion s’oppose à ce qu’un médecin-chef catholique auprès d’un hôpital catholique soit licencié en raison de son divorce et son remariage

The programme of the 2018 edition of the International Seminar on Private International Law organized by Prof. Fernández Rozas and Prof. De Miguel Asensio, has been released and is available here. In this occasion, the Seminar is jointly organized with Prof. Moura Vicente and is to be held at the Law Faculty of the University of Lisbonne on 13-14 September 2018. The Seminar, which is closely connected to the legal journal Anuario Español de Derecho internacional privado, will be structured in five sections: Family and Successions; International Commercial Arbitration: International Business Law; Private International Law and IT Law; and Codification of PIL with a special focus on Latin America. The Conference will bring together around fifty speakers from more than twelve countries. Additional information about the seminar is available here.

Abus de confiance

Peines

Irrecevabilité

Thanks to Héloïse Meur, Lilia Aït Ahmed and Estelle Gallant for this post.

On June 21, 2018 a full-day colloquium will take place in Paris on the protection of unaccompanied minors at the former Courthouse.

The colloquium will see the participation of high-hand speakers from institutions facing the issue of unaccompanied minors :

• French public authorities (French authority to protect human rights and civil liberties, French national consultative committee on human rights), • French Supreme Court, • The Paris Bar, • Major civil associations (GISTI, ECPAT, La Cabane juridique), • French and Belgian professors and Phd candidates in law and geography.

The speakers will discuss the root causes of the migration flows of unaccompanied minors, the limits of their treatment by French authorities, the difficulties to coordinate with other EU member States, and envisage the possible room for improvements, notably vis-à-vis what is done abroad, and especially in Belgium.

The program is available here. For registration send an email to colloquemna@gmail.com.

 

Even Advocate-General Bobek has not managed to turn jurisdictional issues re prospectus liability into the prosaic type of analysis which many of us have become fond of. His Opinion in C-307/17 Löber v Barclays is a lucid, systematic and pedagogic review of the CJEU’s case-law on (now) Article 7(2)’s jurisdiction for tort in the context of ‘prospectus liability’ aka investment misrepresentation. Starting with the direct /indirect damage distinction; and focusing of course on the determination of pure economic loss.

Ms Helga Löber invested in certificates in the form of bearer bonds issued by Barclays Bank Plc. In order to acquire those certificates, the corresponding amounts were transferred from her current (personal) bank account located in Vienna, Austria to two securities accounts in Graz and Salzburg. Payment was then made from those securities accounts for the certificates at issue.

Note immediately that the jurisdictional discussion is a result of Article 7(2) not just identifying a Member State: it identifies specific courts within that Member State. Here: claimant brought her claim before a court in Vienna, the place of her domicile. This is also where her current bank account is located, from which she made the first transfer in order to make the investment. The first- and second-instance courts in Vienna however decided that they did not have jurisdiction to hear the case. The case is now pending before the Oberster Gerichtshof (Supreme Court, Austria). That court is asking, in essence, which of the bank accounts used, if any, is relevant to determine which court has jurisdiction to hear the claim at issue.

Close reference is made to Kolassa. In my posting on that case at the time, I noted that the many factual references which the Court built in in its decision, gave it dubious precedent value. Bobek AG in Löber necessarily therefore distinguishes many factual situations. The almost sole focus lies on 7(2): unlike in Kolassa, contracts neither consumer contracts are an issue.

Here are a few things of note:

First, in his review of the existing case-law the AG at 38 points out like I did at the time of the judgment, that the CJEU’s finding in CDC that locus damni for a pure economic loss, in the case of a corporation, is the place of its registered office, is at odds with precedent (he made the same remark in flyLAL).

Next, on locus delicti commissi, the AG suggests that despite Article 7(2)’s instruction, a single ldc within the Member State cannot be determined. The relevant point in his view is the moment from which the prospectus can, by operation of law, start influencing the investment behaviour of the relevant group of investors. In the present case, and considering the national segmentation of the capital market regulation at issue, that relevant group is made up of investors on secondary markets in Austria. At 65:  once it became possible to offer the certificates on the Austrian secondary market, that possibility was immediately available for the whole territory of Austria. ‘The nature of the tort of misrepresentation at issue does not allow for the identification of a location within the national territory because once the author of the tort is allowed to influence the given national territory, that influence immediately covers the whole territory, irrespective of the actual means used for the publication of a specific prospectus.’ As we know from CDC, the Court does not readily accept that a single ldc cannot be determined.

Further, for locus damni, the AG suggests (at 78) ‘The place where…a legally binding investment obligation is factually assumed… The exact location of such a place is a matter for the national law considered in the light of available factual evidence. It is likely to be the premises of a branch of the bank where the respective investment contract was signed, which may correspond, as in the Kolassa case, to the place where the bank account is held.‘ That in my view first of all is not a warranted outcome. The investor in Löber is not a consumer within the protected categories of the Regulation. Suggesting the place of conclusion of the obligation leaves room for the claimant to manipulate the forum of any future suit in tort. This is exactly what the Court objected to in Universal Music. Moreover, note the reference to ‘the national law’. It is quite unusual to suggest such a role for lex fori in light of the principle of autonomous interpretation. Unless the AG in fact means the ‘lex contractus’, presumably to be determined applying Rome I.

In summary there are quite a few open questions here – not something of course which I would necessarily object to.

Geert.

(Handbook of) EU Private International Law, 2nd ed. 2016, Chapter 2, Heading 2.2.11.2.7

 

Le bilan de la lutte contre le travail dissimulé reste décevant malgré des progrès. Publié hier, celui de 2017 confirme que l’agence centrale des organismes de sécurité sociale (ACOSS) doit relever deux défis structurels : la faiblesse des redressements et du recouvrement.

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