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The standard textbook of Belgian Private International Law in French has just been published in its fourth edition (by Larcier Intersentia). The great scholar François Rigaux published the first version of this précis in 1977-1979 (in two volumes). The second edition followed in 1987-1993, and the third in 2005. While the third edition comprised a single volume, it comes as no surprise that the number of legislative texts and court decisions have obliged the authors to return to the two-volume format. Printed in small typeset and on thin paper, the entire work surpasses 2000 pages. The book forms part of the series Precis de la faculté de droit et de criminologie de l’UCLouvain. The two volumes are truly a “travail de moine” (a very detailed and painstaking work that requires much time and patience).

The authors are all professors or emeritus-professors at the UCLouvain, as was the initial author François Rigaux. He involved Marc Fallon in the second and third editions, and Marc Fallon invided Jean-Yves Carlier and Stéphanie Francq to join for the latest edition.

Volume I contains the general part, discussing the history and method of private international law, as well as general approaches to jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, enforcement and procedure. Volume II covers specific topics.

The authors aim to provide students with both solutions and tools to learn methods of finding solutions. They state this approach in their preface, and remain faithful to it. The book is not restricted to students, but aimed at practitioners, lawyers, judges, notaries, civil servants, legal advisors and researchers alike. Each of these groups will use the book with a slightly different expectation – to find the correct approach, the learn about the law as it is, where it comes from and why it is the way it is. The book offers all of this, at the same time bringing together national, EU and international law, as is indispensable in current-day private international law. The book is therefore not limited to Belgian private international law. As the authors have a deep foundation in EU law, their discussions of private international law are grounded in this broader context. And as Marc Fallon states in the preface, EU law has become “omnipresent” next to the conventions of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. He adds that EU law is now covering a major part of private international law, and that even the parts that are not yet the subject of EU legislation are heavily influenced by primary EU law. Therefore the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU is now a major source of private international law.

The approach is not article-by-article but a coherent discussion of the legal domains of private international law. It contains a thorough explanation of the particular terminology as well as the links to substantive law. It is balanced, providing on the one hand a global analysis of the real complexities of the discipline, and on the other hand clear and precise information and illustrations from case law. Each chapter or section starts with an extensive bibliography of Belgian and international legal literature and websites, divided into the categories relevant for the chapter or section that follows.

The first volume is dedicated to the general part of private international law. Its first chapter sets private international law in the context of international law, international human rights protection, EU law, and transnational legal orders such as religious laws and acts by sports federations. The authors discuss the place of state law in this plurality of legal orders, and the method of private international law to solve system conflicts. It is didactic in its explanation of core notions such as State jurisdiction and sovereignty, spatial limits of State law, territoriality, and nationality.

A rich account of the historical foundations of private international law and different schools make up Chapter 2. The following Chapters, 3 to 7, discuss the connecting factor, its applicability, application, and operation. Chapter 6 dedicates its full 93 pages to the determination of foreign law, including internal conflicts and temporal issues. Renvoi is set out in 23 pages, which explain meticulously the various forms and effects of this technique, and offering an evaluation from various perspectives. This analysis allows the reader to understand the technique, and invites us to view it in all its nuances, for all its advantages, vices and practical value. The Chapter also reviews various methods, such as the method of recognition, and complications such as the preliminary question. It investigates how foreign law must be applied – ex officio or invoked by the parties, and how a court should find such foreign law. The reader encounters again an admirable combination of theory and practice. On the fiction of jura novit curia the authors showcase the different approaches on determining foreign law, and they link this to the nature of the connecting factor (multilateral or unilateral).

Chapter 8 turns to the sources of international procedural law, including the methods to interpret these sources. It covers sources of the EU, international law as well as bilateral treaties. Chapter 9 is a general chapter on civil jurisdiction for international cases. Chapter 10 is the same for recognition and enforcement, called the “effect” of foreign judgments and authentic instruments. The name simultaneously indicates the breadth and depth – the authors cover the many potential effects, and again in detail. They for example delve into the evidentiary effect of foreign acts, a matter that is causing jurists and negotiators headaches during discussions of the EU’s parenthood proposal that is currently on the drawing table. They discuss the external and internal effects, and the factual effects of foreign decisions and authentic acts. The lucidity they bring is welcome in current private international law. Placing this discussion in the general part of their book allows them to draw from various of the so-called third generation private international law Regulations in the EU, i.e. the Regulations that cover jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, enforcement, and cross-border cooperation.

Volume II, the thicker of the two, approaches the various domains of private law step by step. It contains chapters on the law of persons and family (including marriage, divorce, registered partners, cohabitants, matrimonial property, filiation, the protection of children and of adults, and maintenance obligations), property law (including trusts, intellectual property, insolvency, succession), contracts (general and specific contracts), tort (general and specific). Each of these sections discuss jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, and where relevant enforcement. The authors include the specificities of each domain of the law, covering international conventions, EU legislation and its Belgian implementation, Belgian legislation, and case law of EU and Belgian courts. They showcase where mandatory laws, EU primary law (such as free movement), public policy or other exceptions or peculiarities come at play. Old law that could still extend to current situations is also included, for instance with respect to matrimonial property.

The structure of the two books is to a large extent in line with the Belgian Private International Law Code of 2004 (and the Swiss code). But perhaps it is the other way around: perhaps the code followed the initial Rigaux and Fallon structure, with all its didactic qualities. Yet, the Private International Law Code is now full of large holes, eaten out by EU law. The same cannot be said of this Précis.

My copy, which initially served for this book review, is already filled with post-its for my own teaching and research.

Thalia Kruger

This report was written by Josephine Götze, LL.M.-student at the University of Groningen. An extended version will appear in a forthcoming edited volume published by Springer.

On 29 May 2026, the WEAKER PIL research line at the Faculty of Law of the University of Groningen hosted the symposium ‘Digitalisation of Justice: Perspectives from Germany and the Netherlands’ at the House of Connections in Groningen. The symposium brought together scholars from both jurisdictions across four fields of law: private international law, civil procedure, criminal procedure, and administrative procedural law. They were joined by practitioners, emerging scholars, and more than 40 participants.

The symposium was guided by the central research question of the legal and institutional conditions under which the digitalisation of justice in Germany and the Netherlands can contribute to improved access to justice and to the quality of judicial decision-making, without undermining minimum standards of the rule of law and procedural guarantees.

The choice of a bilateral, cross-doctrinal design was deliberate: national legislators and courts are responding to digital transformation at remarkably different speeds, and innovative solutions to shared problems have often already emerged in the other legal system or in a neighbouring field of law. This report focusses on the conference’s discussions around private international law, summarizing the cross-cutting themes that emerged over the course of the day. A full report will be published in the Springer-volume ‘Digitalisation of Justice: Perspectives from Germany and the Netherlands’ in the course of 2027.

 

Opening and Keynote

The symposium was opened by Dr. Benedikt Schmitz (University of Groningen), who described the critical crossroads at which the ongoing digitalisation and our legal system find themselves, with the latter lagging behind when it comes to adjusting existing norms to changing realities. He raised central questions about the use of AI in the legal field and its relation to the rule of law and the principle of fairness. His opening was followed by welcome addresses by Prof. Dr. Wilbert Kolkman, Dean of the Faculty of Law, and Prof. Dr. Jouke de Vries, President of the University Board. In a humorous way, Kolkman criticised what the support of AI has done to the quality of academic legal papers by describing the evolution from the printing press, to pressing print on a computer, to the ‘depressing print’ that he called the papers of students, who are not the only ones handing in AI-generated texts that lack the meaning human-produced work entails. De Vries emphasised the importance of cross-border cooperation to tackle complex societal issues that cannot be approached from one discipline or jurisdiction alone. He further encouraged incorporating the knowledge of civil society organisations into academic debate through transdisciplinary research.

In his keynote address, Dr. Benjamin Grimm (Minister of Justice and for Digitalisation, Federal State of Brandenburg, Germany) offered the perspective of a Land justice ministry engaged in the practical implementation of digital justice. Even in an integrated European Union, he observed, judicial matters continue to reflect national traditions. Precisely for that reason it is necessary to look across borders and learn from one another. Brandenburg was the first German Land to combine the portfolios of justice and digitalisation in a single ministry – a deliberate pairing of a traditionally conservative judiciary with a policy field associated with progress, modernity and new ideas, a combination for which Estonia in particular served as a point of reference. In Brandenburg, responsibilities for digitalisation projects, including their funding, have been consolidated centrally – a choice Grimm defended while acknowledging the tension it creates with Germany’s federal structure.

Grimm placed these institutional choices in a sobering context: in a recent survey, only 15 per cent of citizens said that their expectations of the modern, digital administration were met, and only one in three people expressed trust in their government. Digitalisation, he argued, is therefore not merely a matter of efficient administration but of countering fears and proving that the State remains capable of being future-proof. The State, he insisted, must meet the expectations citizens bring from a world in which goods ordered online arrive the next day. This idea, however, would require central coordination beyond Brandenburg to ensure successful implementation.

For the judiciary, Grimm identified the digital availability of files as the indispensable foundation: the use of AI cannot be accepted, let alone succeed, while courts remain stuck with analogue files. The introduction of the electronic case file, imposed on a sometimes reluctant judiciary, is in his words not even digitalisation but ‘merely electrification’ and thus a first, but certainly not a last, step.

Grimm closed with a plea for coordination: the tools currently in use across the federal states are outdated and scattered, and all ministers of justice are working together towards a uniform software solution and unified architectural standards to fundamentally reform the judiciary’s use of digitalisation. The judiciary, he said, is standing at the dawn of a digital revolution. Several of his themes – the loss of citizens’ trust in a slow-moving administration and the question of how much decision-making may be delegated to machines – returned throughout the day, most directly in Panel 4 and in the closing plenary discussion.

First panel: Private International Law

The first panel, moderated by Benedikt Schmitz (Groningen) and sponsored by the Royal Netherlands Society of International Law, addressed the digitalisation of cross-border civil justice. Susanne Lilian Gössl (Bonn) opened with an assessment of digital justice and cross-border proceedings in Germany, where the progress of digitalisation is slow (and slower still in cross-border cases), marked by general scepticism and uncertainty. Alongside structural features of the field – the applicable law follows the lex fori, the strongest impulses come from EU law (which is nonetheless cautious to interfere with Member States’ procedural law), and the eCodex system provides decentralised, interoperable communication between Member State courts – she pointed to concrete hurdles such as the beA special electronic mailbox, which makes it difficult for foreign attorneys to file cases in Germany, and to courts’ initial resistance to online participation of parties abroad. However, what was once regarded as an affront to the other State’s sovereignty is now increasingly accepted if parties voluntarily participate. Gössl ended by briefly touching upon enforceable and non-enforceable mediation and arbitration agreements and the challenges Germany’s paper-based approaches pose in international settings.

Kirsten Henckel (Groningen) asked whether we can really digitalise justice – and whether courts can actually use the new technologies. EU digitalisation efforts, she argued, largely digitise existing processes while creating problems of their own, relating to, inter alia, privacy, AI, and non-EU service providers. Presenting collective actions as a Dutch tradition of forty years, most recently under the 2020 WAMCA (Dutch Act on the resolution of mass damages in collective actions), she made the Netherlands a case study for access to justice in a digitised world, and raised the question which law prevails when jurisdiction must be established under both the Brussels Ia Regulation and the GDPR as lex specialis.

Frederick Rieländer (Bremen) began his presentation from a comparative perspective: the most technologically advanced countries were at the forefront of digitalising justice, and the EU is now committed to digitalising cross-border proceedings, with the Commission wanting all relevant processes to be digital by the end of the decade. He emphasised that digital tools can reshape the handling and administration of cross-border litigation in the EU, but the legal framework needs to be refined through uniform European standards to unlock these transformative abilities without undermining the procedural rights of users. Rieländer distinguished between German pilot projects of organisational assistance systems, decision-support systems and (semi-)automated ‘case deciders’, the former two already in use, as illustrated by a tool that helps judges detect hallucinated citations in lengthy party submissions. He extended his analysis to immersive technologies (virtual, augmented and mixed reality) as new evidentiary possibilities across borders, not yet employed in most EU Member States. As a way forward, Rieländer pointed to the European Law Institute and UNIDROIT as potential drafters of a soft-law instrument to create rules on the use of AI that can set minimum standard while the digitalisation within the EU continues to move forward.

The ensuing discussion turned to international arbitration, which in some respects has moved faster than the courts: the Dutch Arbitration Act, it was noted, already allowed for digital hearings during the COVID-19 pandemic. On the use of AI in arbitration, a consensus emerged to remain cautious: because AI can never be impartial, decision-making should not be entrusted to it. As a tool, however, it is of great value and may eventually enable arbitrators to draw on more information than any human could; provided its (confirmation) bias is overcome. Two practical constraints were added: AI will only be integrated into practice if it is simple to use, whereas practitioners currently face a difficult choice between too many confusing tools. Moreover, most Member States are too small to gather sufficient data to train large language models on their own – an observation that led back to the panel’s emphasis on common standards within a European legal framework.

Second panel: Civil Procedure

The second panel, moderated by Patrick Koerts (Groningen), turned to domestic civil procedure. Gralf-Peter Calliess (Bremen) traced Germany’s history of digital false starts – from a digital signature too secure ever to be affordable to the repeatedly postponed electronic case file – and remained sceptical of the online-procedure pilots introduced in December 2025 in the new Book 12 of the German Code of Civil Procedure: digitalisation, he argued, requires a change of mindset from adjudication as an exercise of sovereign power (Hoheit) to adjudication as a judicial service (Dienstleistung). Pauline Ernste (Nijmegen) examined judicial fact-finding via Google and ChatGPT under Dutch procedural law: LLM-derived facts cannot qualify as facts of common knowledge, the duty to tell the truth requires parties to disclose their own use of AI, and AI literacy must be structurally embedded in legal training.

Third panel: Criminal Procedure

In the third panel, moderated by Glenn Thodé (Groningen), Hannah Ofterdinger (Hamburg) took stock of the digitalisation of German criminal procedure and its obstacles, concluding that the question is not whether, but how we digitalise. Dorris de Vocht (Tilburg) asked why the Netherlands treats remote hearings as a last resort and argued that the assumption that meaningful participation requires physical presence should itself be questioned: procedural fairness should not – and does not have to – depend on whether a hearing is physical or remote. Laura Peters (Groningen) presented the AIWITNESS project and the FAIR method, contending that criminal procedural principles must guide the design of AI systems from the outset She concluded that criminal procedural law is moving from ex post review to procedural design.

Fourth panel: Administrative Procedure

The fourth panel, moderated by Ida Varosanec (Groningen), addressed administrative procedural law. Sarah Rachut (Braunschweig) mapped Germany’s asymmetric regulation of administrative authorities and courts, presented survey evidence from the TITAN project on the use of AI within the administration, and identified a regulatory gap: fully automated administrative acts are regulated, AI-assisted decision preparation is not. Sofia Ranchordás (Tilburg/Rome) argued that the procedural safeguards of administrative law – the right to be heard, the duty to state reasons, the right of access, and judicial review – are built on the paper logic of the file, which digital transformation dissolves. She noted how discretion migrates from the decision to the design, and the task is not to retrofit, but to rethink. The following lively discussion closed on a question that hung over much of the day: what do we do with the law that was not made for digitalisation?

Closing Session and Outlook

The closing session opened with elevator pitches by five emerging scholars. Of most direct interest to readers of this blog, Mustafa Can (Groningen) turned to the law applicable to civil liability in EU token markets, contrasting public money with digital assets issued by private institutions. Individual proceedings are possible, but the cross-border setting creates an inherent foreign element, leading him to emphasise the importance of simplification. The remaining pitches ranged from a digital ‘zeroth instance’ for German civil proceedings and its constitutional tensions (Noelle Frick, Speyer), via automation bias and the limits of human oversight in AI-based evidence verification (Sabrina Pölle, Passau) and the missing mechanisms for reviewing the decision logic of administrative tools (Constanze Rothermel, Berlin), to algorithm-driven benefit sanctioning in Denmark and the Netherlands (Anne Spijkstra, Tilburg).

In the plenary discussion that followed, the threads of the day converged on a recurring theme: humans in the judiciary were not perfect before AI either. The discussion cautioned against measuring machines by a standard of perfection that humans have never met. A second observation reached back to the fourth panel: the digital is built on top of a long paper trail, and digital justice inherits the logic, and the legacy, of the file.

Viewed across the four panels, the relevant divide did not always run between Germany and the Netherlands, but frequently between fields of law: Germany’s infrastructure-first trajectory has repeatedly stumbled over its own thoroughness, while in the Netherlands the frontline questions lie further downstream: judges googling and parties submitting ChatGPT-written claims. The tension between efficiency gains and procedural guarantees returned in each panel in different ways. For private international law, it took the form of the question whether cross-border digitalisation can proceed without uniform European standards protecting the procedural rights of users – standards all the more necessary because most Member States are too small to develop trustworthy systems alone.

How much of legal decision-making can be left to AI was answered formally (any final decisions must remain human) but not substantively. Finally, the question what we do with the law that was not made for digitalisation remained open. Perhaps the day’s most consistent answer was voiced almost identically at its beginning and its end: the electronic case file is ‘merely electrification’, a first step but not a last (Grimm). Now, the task is not to retrofit, but to rethink (Ranchordás). An edited volume with contributions by the panellists and emerging scholars, taking up these questions in greater depth, will be published by Springer in the course of 2027 under the title ‘Digitalisation of Justice: Perspectives from Germany and the Netherlands’.

Nadia Rusinova has just released “Practical Handbook on EU Family Law. Part 2: Litigating International Child Abduction Cases under the 1980 Hague Convention in the EU”. This tool was designed for lawyers and judges working with international child abduction cases in Europe. It is free and practice-oriented resource aimed at making cross-border family law clearer, […]

Following an earlier call on this blog, the Civil Justice Conversations Series organised by the European Civil Justice Centre will kick off on 11 September at 10 am CEST. At this first session Benedikt Schmitz (Assistant Professor of Private International Law and Comparative Contract Law, University of Groningen) will present on ‘ Cross-Border Disputes Under the Revised Consumer ADR Directive: A Renaissance?’. After initial comments by discussant Emma van Gelder (Assistant Professor of Private Law at Utrecht University), the floor is open for discussion and exchange.

Registration link available here.

Further information on the series is available here: Civil Justice Conversations Planning

The next general congress of the International Academy of Comparative Law (IACL) will take place from 28 September to 2 October 2026 at the Humboldt University of Berlin. The rich programme includes a panel devoted to private international law, scheduled for 2 October, under the title The Application of the Lex Fori: Developments in Practice […]

The fifth annual Asian Private International Law Academy (APILA) Conference will take place in person at Sungkyunkwan University in Seoul (South Korea) on Saturday 12 (Day 1) and Sunday 13 (Day 2) December 2026.  The APILA Conference will be in the form of two days of roundtable discussions in English.  Persons whose abstracts have been selected (see next paragraph) will deliver oral presentations in turn on Days 1 and 2.  Each presentation will run for about 15 minutes and be followed by a discussion of about 10 to 15 minutes in which participants will have the opportunity to comment on the presentation.  The objective of the APILA Conference is to assist presenters to refine prospective research papers with a view to eventual publication.

Persons who are interested in delivering presentations at the APILA Conference are invited to submit abstracts of their proposals in English.  While proposals may be on any topic, they should (1) focus on private international law issues and (2) somehow relate to Asia (broadly defined).  Further, while every effort will be made to fit in as many presentations as possible, given the constraints of time, it may not be feasible to accept all proposals.  Inevitably, in that case, some selection may be necessary.  APILA apologises in advance for this.  Everything else being equal, priority will be given to proposals exploring cutting edge questions (albeit not necessarily definitively answering them) in one or more of the following areas: (1) international dispute resolution (especially international arbitration and mediation), (2) data protection and data privacy, (3) competition law (including within digital markets), (4) family law (including succession), (5) intellectual property rights, (6) Islamic private international law, (7) environmental issues (including climate change), (8) business and human rights, (9) cryptocurrency and the blockchain, (10) sanctions and counter-sanctions, (11) the economic analysis of private international law rules, and (12) artificial intelligence.

Abstracts are to be submitted by email to apilaconference@gmail.com by Saturday 24 October 2026.  Persons whose abstracts have been accepted will be so informed by Saturday 31 October 2026.  They are thereafter requested to submit their presentations in PowerPoint format or (if the presentation is in the form of a draft paper) in pdf format by email to apilaconference@gmail.com by Saturday 21 November 2026.  All PowerPoint presentations and draft papers received will be circulated in advance electronically among APILA Conference participants.  Participants will thus be able to read into the topics to be discussed in advance of the APILA Conference.  Oral presentations can then focus on succinct statements of key takeaways and more time can be allotted to discussion.

Please note that APILA’s available funding is limited.  Therefore, in the normal course of events, APILA regrets that it will not be able to provide funding for the travel and accommodation expenses of presenters and attendees.

Earlier this year, on 19 February 2026, the Court of Appeal of England and Wales handed down judgment in Fridman v Argofirma Oniks LLC [2026] EWCA Civ 139. The case concerned a fundamental question of English private international law: must a defendant be present in England at the time of service of a claim form […]

If you do use the blog for research or database purposes, let alone for practice purposes, citation would be appreciated, to the blog as a whole and /or to specific blog posts. Many have suggested I should turn the blog into a paid for, subscription service however I have resisted doing so. Proper reference to how the blog is useful to its readers, will help keeping this so.

Like all my posts, this post is entirely AI free.

A note on an interesting judgment by the first instance court at Rotterdam, concerning a ‘boiler room fraud’. In X v OKX Europe and Aux Cayes Fintech ECLI:NL:RBROT:2026:11084, the court accepted jurisdiction on the basis of Article 7(2) Brussels Ia locus damni /Erfolgort, against OKX of Malta; and on the basis of mutatis mutandis application of Dutch residual rules, against Aux Cayes of The Sechelles.

X is a natural person, who transferred the phished funds from accounts in The Netherlands, the only country in which he has accounts, and the place where his assets are impacted. [4.4] the court distinguishes CJEU Universal Music: in that case, it argues, claimant was a business which conceivably could have paid the settlement at issue from a variety of bank accounts across the EU, and the CJEU wanted to rule out consequential forum shopping. That is not a risk here. Further [4.5] predictability is assured, and [4.6] the alleged shortcomings of the platform (OKX, it will be argued, knew of the use of its platform by fraudsters and failed to address it) are held to be of a more serious nature than the professional mistake (in effect, a calculus mistake) by the lawyer at the core of the Universal Music facts. Finally [4.7] a finding of lack of jurisdiction would force the individual to issue concurrent claims in Malta and The Seychelles, effectively blocking his access to the courts, and [4.8] OKX cannot be surprised to be sued in The Netherlands given it is registered and active on the Dutch market.

An interesting judgment. In Universal Music the CJEU posited the ‘more is needed than a bank account’ rather generally however that does not of course mean that a national court may distinguish on the facts.

Geert.

 

If you do use the blog for research or database purposes, citation would be appreciated, to the blog as a whole and /or to specific blog posts. Many have suggested I should turn the blog into a paid for, subscription service however I have resisted doing so. Proper reference to how the blog is useful to its readers, will help keeping this so.

Like all my posts, this post is entirely AI free.

Case C‑345/25 [Grixta] concerns alleged embezzlement of Libyan state funds.  Claimant is the State of Libya. Defendants are (a) the Court appointed attorneys ad litem representing the estate of BC, a now deceased former official and son of a Libyan leader, (b) the agent for BC’s mother as one
of his presumed heirs, and (c) Capital Resources Ltd (‘CRL’),  a company
established under the laws of Malta.

I shall continue the post with reference to BC even though the AG himself identifies him as Muatassim Kadhafi, one of Colonel Kdhafi’s sons.

Libya seeks (i) a declaration that BC’s assets held in Malta, in his own name or in the name of third parties, are being held in breach of Libyan law and must therefore be returned to the State of Libya, and (ii) authorisation for the transfer of shares held in CRL to the State of Libya.

The claim is a left-over from criminal proceedings which have discontinued following BC’s death. Various issues on the interpretation of Libyan law, including its statutes of limitation, hinge on the very applicability of Rome II to the case. Questions referred are

1. Does the notion of ‘civil and commercial matters’ in [A1 Rome II] cover a claim such as that submitted by the State of Libya pursuant to the foregoing laws in order to recover assets of the deceased BC that are present in Malta?
2. Does the exception relating to administrative matters referred to in [A1 Rome II] cover a claim such as that submitted by the State of Libya pursuant to the foregoing laws in order to recover assets of the deceased BC that are present in Malta?
3. If it is established that [Rome II] applies to the present
case, what is the distinction between the obligation arising out of a
tort/delict (Article 4(1) of the regulation) and unjust enrichment arising
out of a tort/delict (Article 10(1) of the regulation) in a case such as
that at issue before this Court?

Richard de la Tour AG opined last week (no English edition available at the time of writing) that the request is inadmissible and that if it were admissible, the CJEU should hold that Rome II is not engaged.

The opinion on admissibility relates to the EU’s Libyan sanctions, and the argument that a Member State body such as a court is not in a position to judge ownership in, let alone order transfer of, sanctioned assets without itself violating EU sanctions law. Here the AG suggests that under sanctions law at most, and similarly to The State of Libya v Capitana Seas Limited [2012] EWHC 602, reproduced in Annex XIV of this UNSC report, a court could hold on a civil law claim in confirmation of ownership illegally obtained (rather than of actual transfer or recovery).

The AG then discusses the issue of ‘civil and commercial’ viz such a claim, against the background ia of Muatassim Kadhafi’s military activities. He first of all suggests the need to interpret Rome II (where the CJEU has not yet held on the meaning of the term ‘civil and commercial’) consistently with the abundant Brussels Ia authorities on the issue (the reader will find many a case discussed on the blog). He distinguishes CJEU Sonntag, which concerned a civil claim piggybacking on a criminal procedure, and he refers to the Libyan substantive laws granting Libyan authorities the right to order restitution of property quite independent of criminal proceedings.

I would have expected reference to CJEU Máha. I would have also expected, for the findings on ‘civil and commercial’, less reference to substantive applicable Libyan law, and more to the need for autonomous interpretation; if anything, more reference to the procedures and powers of the Maltese courts at issue, rather than to the procedures in Lybia, a third State where current proceedings are not being taken. One may have perhaps expected some discussion of foreign act of state.

Particularly if the result of EU and UN sanctions is that  court findings be limited to declaration of ownership rather than any subsequent transfer or asset recovery, this claim for me walks and talks like a money claim. But perhaps I am guilty of undercomplicating things.

Geert.

 

The third edition of IPRG/LugÜ – Bundesgesetz über das Internationale Privatrecht, Lugano-Übereinkommen und weitere Erlasse, by Jolanta Kren Kostkiewicz, has just been published. It is a commentary on the Swiss Act on Private International Law (PILA) and the Lugano Convention. It is described (in German) as follows: The entirety of Swiss private international and procedural […]

by Marta Liduma, LLB candidate in International and European Law, University of Groningen

A Dutch actor dies in March. By April, his likeness starts to appear widely. Generated videos show him promoting a supplement, and one clip ends with a link to a shop selling shirts printed with his face. A single man in Germany creates all of this, in large quantities, using a dozen deceased performers.

Who can sue, and in which court?

Dutch law answers the first question readily. Article 21 of the Auteurswet allows publication to be resisted when a reasonable interest of the portrayed person, or after his death of one of his surviving relatives, opposes it. Article 25a, in the same paragraph of the Act, identifies those relatives as the parents, the spouse or registered partner and the children, each of whom may act independently of the others. Article 21 addresses whoever holds the copyright for the portrait, which poses a problem for a generated video that may have no author at all. However, Article 35 makes the publication of a portrait without entitlement an offence for anybody, and Dutch practice has long read the two provisions together. German law follows a similar design. Section 22 of the Kunsturhebergesetz (KUG) requires the consent of the family of the deceased (Angehörige) for ten years after death, and defines them as the surviving spouse or registered partner and the children, failing whom the parents.

The second question leads to the Court of Justice and its judgment on 18 June 2026 in Idziski (C-232/25). The concentrating head of Article 7(2) Brussels Ia puts two questions to a single individual. Does the content identify you, and where are your interests centred? Death creates separation between these questions, and current case law keeps them apart.

The custodial pattern

Both provisions grant the post-mortem entitlement to a closed class of relatives, a group defined by their relationship to the deceased and not by any interest in the estate they left. A disinherited son may object, while the residuary legatee under the will stands outside the class entirely. Such relatives are best described as custodians, since the entitlement is all they hold of the deceased.

The German decade deserves a moment’s attention. Since section 22 of the KUG requires consent for ten years after death, the Federal Court of Justice has extended this same period by analogy to the pecuniary side of the post-mortem personality right in kinski-klaus.de (BGH, 5 October 2006, I ZR 277/03, BGHZ 169, 193), while the dignitary side endures beyond the ten-year mark. German law thus surrenders its transmissible part ten years after death. What survives is the dignitary part, which rests on constitutional grounds and is exercised by whoever is entitled to act for the deceased.

Whose interest the custodian asserts is settled in Germany and open in the Netherlands. German law divides the post-mortem personality right in two. The dignitary components rest upon Article 1(1) of the Basic Law, the right to free development of personality under Article 2(1) belonging to the living alone, and after death they are exercised by a person entitled to act on the deceased’s behalf (Wahrnehmungsberechtigter), in the case of images the Angehörige of section 22. That person holds defensive claims alone, and no claim for damages (BGH, 6 December 2005, VI ZR 265/04, BGHZ 165, 203, restated in kinski-klaus.de). The pecuniary components are separate. They are inheritable and pass instead to the heirs (Erben), who may bring damages claims in respect of them (Marlene Dietrich, BGHZ 143, 214), an allocation the Federal Constitutional Court held in 2006 (BVerfG, 22 August 2006, 1 BvR 1168/04) to be consistent with section 22, that provision governing consent rather than commercial value. Article 21 of the Auteurswet is drafted the other way about, speaking of a reasonable interest of the surviving relative herself.

The Dutch question may be left open, since the two readings fail for different reasons. Upon the first, the claimant asserts her own interest, and everything the video discloses belongs to her husband. Upon the second, the content identifies the person whose interest is asserted, and the difficulty moves to the place. Either reading leaves the concentrating head requiring one person to satisfy both of its conditions, a burden that under a custodial statute falls to two.

The existing commentary has been occupied with a different question. Giacomo Marola reads Idziski as a judgment of continuity in his contribution to the EAPIL Blog. Tobias Lutzi, at ConflictofLaws.net, entitled his note Nothing to See Here. Both readings are sound. The difficulty is that a rule which the Court has reaffirmed without qualifying it is now settled law for situations nobody has yet brought before it. A parallel debate has been running in Denmark and the Netherlands, where legislators have considered giving a person a statutory right in their own likeness, and it turns on who ought to hold such a right once its subject has died, and for how long. Neither literature has yet asked what follows once that question receives the answer the existing statutes already give it, which is to place the entitlement in the hands of somebody whom the content passes over.

Two bounds before going further. Neither reform is in force. The Danish bill, which would add new sections 65a and 73a to the Copyright Act and protect a person’s appearance and voice for fifty years after death, went out to consultation in July 2025 and was notified to the Commission under the TRIS procedure that October. The standstill ran into February 2026, when the Commission issued comments, and the entry date of 31 March 2026 written into the draft passed with the bill still not introduced. By February the Ministry of Culture had already moved its expectation to 1 July 2026, and a general election in March then removed the introduction slot as well. The Dutch initiative bill prepared by the member Dral, which would create a neighbouring right covering deepfakes of living and deceased persons, was consulted on between October and December 2025, and in May 2026 the Commissie Auteursrecht advised abandoning the proposed neighbouring right as an unsuitable instrument. Its author has since left the House of Representatives, and the government has said that it is for her successor to decide whether the project continues (Aanhangsel Handelingen II 2025/26, no 1351). The custodial provisions therefore govern. If either of the reforms arrives and if its related-right characterisation were to be recognised as an autonomous matter of Union law, the claim would move out of personality law and fall outside the scope of what follows. Secondly, if the defendant is domiciled outside the Union, then Article 6(1) applies together with the residual national rules of the forum.

What Idziski allocates

The judgment was given under Regulation 44/2001, the Polish proceedings having begun in 2013, and at paragraphs 26 and 27 the Court confirmed that its reading applies equally to Article 7(2) of Brussels Ia.

Upon the concentrating head the Court restated Mittelbayerischer Verlag (C-800/19). The courts of a claimant’s centre of interests may hear a claim for the entirety of the damage only where the content carries verifiable and objectively ascertainable material identifying that person, directly or indirectly, as an individual (paragraph 50). Indirect identification requires certainty, by reason of “attributes which are specific to them and which distinguish them from all other individuals” (paragraph 55). Membership of a defined group falls short of that standard, even where the group itself is unmistakable (paragraphs 53 and 54).

Consider the widow suing upon her own interest. Everything the video displays belongs to her husband, and the very feature that makes her claim worth bringing defeats her under the test.

The representative reading raises a different problem. If she exercises the deceased’s right, identification is satisfied since the content identifies the actor with precision. The centre of interests must then be located, and it belongs to a man who has died. eDate and Bolagsupplysningen both proceed upon a claimant with a life to be centred somewhere, and substituting the claimant’s own would detach the connecting factor from the person the content concerns.

Paragraph 56 confirms the difficulty rather than resolving it. The requirement exists so that the issuer of content may ascertain the centre of interests of those who are its subject, and predict where proceedings against him will lie. An uploader who generates a video of a well known actor may discover within a minute where that actor lived. The daughter’s residence remains obscure to him, and under Article 25a there may be four custodians acting independently, with four centres of interests between them. Predictability is served by asking after the person depicted, while the rule asks after the person suing.

The mosaic head remains available, and the point should be acknowledged. Paragraph 64 confirms, following Gtflix Tv, that compensation can be divided and recovered in each Member State for the damage caused there. Paragraph 67 applies as much to Z.R., who failed the identification test and could still recover in Poland. Both custodial provisions describe a territorial wrong. Section 22 covers distribution and public display, while Article 21 deals with openbaarmaking. This means the injury is spread across the states where the video was viewed. Nevertheless, the concession does nothing for the German dignitary custodian. Because his claim is defensive, a damages jurisdiction is of no use to him, and the removal he seeks lies with a court that paragraph 67 places elsewhere.

Ruling 2 limits what survives. A court with territorially limited authority hears divisible claims and does not have jurisdiction over a non-pecuniary remedy that seeks to correct information placed online (paragraph 67). This is based on the indivisibility principle from Bolagsupplysningen (paragraph 48). Removal is the remedy that answers content that can be regenerated faster than damages can be assessed. Lutzi adds that such non-pecuniary remedies as do survive face poor chances of being enforced in the defendant’s own Member State.

What remains

Paragraph 47 reassures that a claimant may always bring an action for damages covering all the harm caused, at the defendant’s domicile or at the place of the causal event. For a corporate co-producer, the two are distinct and useful. For a single uploader, they have the same address. Article 8(1) offers a joinder that these facts fail to satisfy. Uploaders who share a subject and a model are too loosely connected to risk irreconcilable judgments. Therefore, custodians must file a separate action for each uploader in that uploader’s own courts, based on whatever conflict rules the forum has in place. Personality claims are not covered by Rome II according to Article 1(2)(g). For this type of claim, the concentrating head of Article 7(2) leads to dispersal.

The merchandise version follows the same pattern. Shirts with a dead actor’s face are the paradigm the provisions were drafted for, unambiguously commercial and readily quantified. Dutch law has long recognised that a reasonable interest under Article 21 may be commercial, as the Hoge Raad addressed in Cruijff v Tirion (14 June 2013, ECLI:NL:HR:2013:CA2788). The shirt, however, depicts the actor alone.

One reply claims that the difficulty is merely academic, since notice and action can resolve such disputes, and questions of jurisdiction rarely come up. The argument holds so long as the platform agrees. Under Article 16(3) of the Digital Services Act, a notice is considered to give rise to actual knowledge when it permits a diligent provider to recognise the illegality without needing detailed legal examination. A notice sent by a Dutch widow, using a Dutch provision against a German uploader, in a field where applicable law is determined by residual national rules, is precisely the case that requires such an examination, and so falls outside the provision. Consequently, the notice keeps the provider where Article 6 of that Regulation found it, whatever other circumstances may later establish knowledge. Notice and action have concealed the defect instead of curing it.

Each part of the argument is old. Indivisibility dates back to 2017, and the identification requirement comes from 2021. Their combined effect on a claimant outside the contemplation of both is the novelty.

Anchoring the forum to the decedent

The solution proposed here aims to anchor the connecting factor to the deceased rather than to the person suing. This way, the concentrating forum shifts to the last centre of interests of the person the content concerns. Such a rule provides the predictability that paragraph 56 needs, locates the proceedings where evidence of the deceased’s reputation can be found, and restores the pairing that the head presupposes.

The concept allows for this development. In paragraph 39, the Court notes that the centre-of-interests option exists in the interests of the sound administration of justice rather than for the specific protection of the applicant. This clarifies why, in Bolagsupplysningen, the natural or legal character of the claimant was not important. A head of jurisdiction serving the administration of justice may perfectly well locate its connecting factor elsewhere than in the claimant. It should be found where the dispute belongs. For content concerning one identified deceased person, that location is where that person’s life was centred.

The proposal needs a development in doctrine rather than just application of it. The custodial provisions work by designation instead of transmission, and Article 25a allows four possible custodians to exercise independently, which resists simplification to a single inherited position. Lutzi and Marola both suggest that this kind of recalibration belongs to the recast of Brussels Ia rather than to the Court, and they are probably correct on this general point. The challenge is timing. Custodial claims will come with the next well known death, whereas the recast will take some more years to arrive.

The alternative solution is a private one and stems from a situation before Idziski. In the case of Stichting Right to Consumer Justice and Stichting App Stores Claims (C-34/24, 2 December 2025), the Court allowed representative foundations, asserting their own right to defend the collective interests of a group of unidentified but identifiable persons, to rely upon Article 7(2), a development which Burkhard Hess referred to as the creation of a new forum actoris through judicial lawmaking. Idziski continues this approach at paragraphs 57 to 59. A family could thus set up a foundation in order to defend the actor’s dignity, reputation and memory and to litigate through that foundation.

The course is inferior to the proposal made above even where it succeeds, since the availability of a forum would then depend upon whether a family possessed the means and the foresight to incorporate. It very likely fails in any event. The operative ruling speaks of a group whose members form a closed category, and a single deceased individual falls outside that description. Paragraph 59 grounds the exception in predictability, and the exception was predictable in Idziski because the series addressed the unit directly, whereas an uploader generating at volume remains ignorant of a foundation’s existence and of where it operates. The exception arose, moreover, in a Polish case concerning the collective dignity of a wartime unit, and may generalise less readily than its wording invites.

The question for the Court, when a national court eventually puts it, is whether the identification requirement in Article 7(2) attaches to the claimant or to the person whose interest is asserted. Idziski assumed the two to be one person, as the earlier case law had done, because on the facts of all those cases they were. Under a custodial statute they are always two.

AI was used in the creation of this post for feedback and research. All writing and analysis is the author’s own.

 

On Tuesday, September 8, 2026, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute will host its monthly virtual workshop Current Research in Private International Law at 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (CEST).

Xandra Kramer (Erasmus University Rotterdam & Utrecht University) will speak, in English, about the topic

“Cross-Border Collective Litigation in Tech Cases: Is the European Framework up to the Challenge?”

Collective actions have gained traction in Europe, boosted by the Representative Actions Directive and enabled by third-party litigation funding in several jurisdictions. These increasingly involve cases against multinational big tech companies operating in Europe. The current private international law framework, however, is not designed to address the challenges of these complex cases.  The presentation will discuss how the European Court of Justice and Dutch courts have primarily handled questions of international jurisdiction and to what extent the existing legislative framework needs amendment.

The presentation will be followed by open discussion. All are welcome. More information and sign-up here.

If you want to be invited to these events in the future, please write to veranstaltungen@mpipriv.de.

In its decision of 17 June in HR-2026-1358-A, the Norwegian Supreme Court dismissed an appeal contesting the jurisdiction of the Norwegian courts under the forum delicti rule in the 2007 Lugano Convention. The underlying proceedings concerned a damages claim brought by the Norwegian tax authorities against a person domiciled in Cyprus following the non-payment of VAT […]

This review concentrates principally on the private international law dimensions of Andrew Dickinson and Alexander Thompson’s The State Immunity Act 1978. Although state immunity is fundamentally a subject of public international law, the legislation operates at the point where public and private international law intersect. It determines whether the English courts may adjudicate disputes involving foreign states, how proceedings may be served, and whether judgments or arbitral awards may be recognised and enforced against state property. These questions are of direct importance to private international lawyers, particularly in transnational commercial, employment, property and arbitration disputes.

The authors bring considerable practical expertise to the subject. As the preface indicates, their analysis is informed not only by academic study but also by professional experience of state-immunity litigation. The result is a specialist and authoritative treatment of a technically demanding statute. The chapters generally combine legislative history, an overview of the relevant statutory provisions, and a detailed examination of their judicial application.

Chapter 1 explains the historical development of the State Immunity Act 1978 and the United Kingdom’s movement from absolute to restrictive immunity. Under restrictive immunity, a foreign state remains immune in respect of sovereign acts but may be subject to jurisdiction in relation to commercial and other non-sovereign activities. This distinction provides the organising principle for much of the Act and gives the subject its particular importance for private international law.

Chapter 2 is especially significant because it situates the 1978 Act within the wider legal framework. The Act is mandatory and generally supersedes the pre-existing common-law rules governing state immunity. Although it was influenced by the European Convention on State Immunity 1972, the United Kingdom courts are not required to interpret it as if it faithfully reproduced every aspect of that Convention. At the same time, the Act should, so far as its language permits, be interpreted consistently with customary international law, on the presumption that Parliament did not intend to place the United Kingdom in breach of its international obligations.

The United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States and Their Property  2004 may also inform the interpretation of the Act. It is not, however, binding for this purpose, nor can all its provisions automatically be treated as definitive statements of customary international law. The authors therefore demonstrate that statutory interpretation in this field requires careful engagement with legislation, treaties, customary international law and judicial authority.

The chapter also distinguishes state immunity from related regimes. The State Immunity Act primarily concerns the immunity of foreign states and incorporates exceptions associated with restrictive immunity. The Diplomatic Privileges Act 1964 and Consular Relations Act 1968, by contrast, protects particular persons in the performance of their official functions and is governed by separate legislations. Special missions and international organisations are similarly subject to distinct statutory regimes.

The discussion of human rights identifies a persistent tension between access to justice and respect for sovereign immunity. The United Kingdom courts have generally placed substantial weight on the latter. Provisions of the Act have nevertheless been challenged under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights 1998. Declarations of incompatibility have been made in the employment context, most notably in Benkharbouche v Embassy of Sudan and Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs v Benkharbouche, while in Kingdom of Spain v Lydia Lorenzo [2024] EWCA Civ 1602, the UK Court of Appeal ruled that a foreign state cannot claim state immunity in an employment discrimination and unfair dismissal case brought by an administrative embassy worker. These cases show that state immunity is not merely a procedural technicality: it may determine whether an individual has any effective opportunity to vindicate substantive rights.

The book also explains the post-Brexit relationship between state immunity and European Union law. EU law no longer has the supremacy it previously enjoyed within the United Kingdom, although retained or assimilated EU law and the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 remain relevant to the historical development and present operation of some rules.

Equally important is the distinction between state immunity and the foreign act-of-state doctrine. Both rest, in part, on ideas of sovereign equality and the independence of states, but foreign act of state is a common-law doctrine rather than a product of the 1978 Act. The doctrines should therefore not be treated as interchangeable.

For private international lawyers, the book’s most important conceptual point is that the 1978 Act limits the adjudicatory jurisdiction that a United Kingdom court would otherwise possess. It does not itself confer jurisdiction. A claimant must first establish jurisdiction under the ordinary rules of civil procedure and private international law. Only then does the separate question arise whether the foreign state is immune from the exercise of that jurisdiction. This distinction between the existence of jurisdiction and immunity from its exercise is fundamental.

Chapter 4 examines the general immunity from adjudicatory jurisdiction. The statutory scheme leans strongly towards protecting foreign states: the claimant bears the burden of establishing an applicable exception to immunity, even where the foreign state declines to appear. This may present a considerable practical obstacle because the facts necessary to establish an exception may be difficult for a private claimant to obtain without the state’s participation.

Chapter 5 considers submission to jurisdiction. A choice-of-court agreement in favour of the courts of any part of the United Kingdom may constitute a waiver of immunity, whereas a choice-of-law clause does not. This distinction is particularly important in drafting international contracts. Selecting English law does not, without more, amount to consent by a foreign state to the jurisdiction of the English courts.

Submission may also occur through a treaty, convention or other international agreement, but it must be express. A state may submit after the dispute has arisen, and although such submission must be express, it need not necessarily be in writing. Submission may additionally result from instituting proceedings, advancing a counterclaim or participating in proceedings beyond what is necessary to assert immunity. The act of submission must be duly authorised by the state. Once valid submission occurs, the state is generally placed in the position of an ordinary litigant for the relevant proceedings. Importantly, however, submission to adjudication does not necessarily amount to consent to enforcement against state property.

Chapter 6 addresses commercial transactions and associated obligations, including contracts to be performed in the United Kingdom. The commercial-transactions exception lies at the heart of restrictive immunity and is shaped by both the earlier common law and the European Convention. It is particularly relevant to private international law because disputes concerning the character of a transaction, contractual performance and the territorial connection with the United Kingdom may determine whether immunity is available.

Chapter 7 concerns employment contracts. As the authors observe, section 4 may justifiably claim to be among the most controversial provisions of the Act. The central authority is Benkharbouche, in which statutory restrictions on claims by state employees were held incompatible with Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights and, at the relevant time, Article 47 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. The resulting changes strengthened employees’ access to justice. The chapter is particularly valuable because cross-border employment disputes frequently bring together jurisdiction, applicable law, mandatory employment protection, human rights and the public international law of immunity.

Chapters 8 to 14 examine the statutory exceptions relating to personal injury and damage to property; ownership, possession and use of property; intellectual and industrial property; companies and other collective bodies; arbitration; admiralty proceedings; and taxation. The property provisions remove immunity in defined proceedings concerning property, subject to protections for premises used for diplomatic purposes. The intellectual-property exception reflects restrictive immunity but has generated comparatively little reported litigation.

The arbitration chapter is of special interest to commercial lawyers. Where a state has agreed in writing to submit a dispute to arbitration, immunity from the supervisory or supporting jurisdiction of the courts is generally removed in relation to the arbitration. This provision has been frequently litigated. Nevertheless, the existence of an arbitration agreement and the removal of adjudicatory immunity do not automatically permit execution against state assets. Parties dealing with states must therefore distinguish carefully between consent to arbitration, consent to court proceedings connected with arbitration and waiver of immunity from enforcement.

Chapter 15 examines service of process and default judgments. These procedural matters have substantial private international law significance because the validity of service and the protection afforded to an absent foreign state may determine whether proceedings can advance and whether a judgment will ultimately be effective.

Chapter 16 addresses enforcement jurisdiction, perhaps the area in which the special position of a sovereign state is most pronounced. Coercive measures—including injunctions, contempt proceedings, orders compelling employee reinstatement and execution against state property—are generally considered inappropriate without a sufficient statutory basis. Even where a claimant has successfully established jurisdiction and obtained judgment, enforcement may therefore remain impossible.

The principal exceptions arise where the state has expressly and unequivocally waived immunity from enforcement or where the relevant property is in use, or intended for use, for commercial purposes. A waiver of immunity from adjudication should not lightly be treated as a waiver of immunity from execution. This separation has major practical consequences: a claimant may win the legal dispute yet be unable to obtain the benefit of the judgment. The chapter reinforces the need for contracts involving states to contain carefully drafted and distinct waivers addressing jurisdiction, interim relief and enforcement.

Chapter 17 discusses the meaning of “the State” and the treatment of separate entities, central banks and constituent territories. Whether a body forms part of the state or is a separate entity may determine both the applicable test for immunity and the availability of assets for enforcement. Central-bank property receives particularly strong protection. These classification questions are often decisive in cross-border litigation, especially where commercial activity is conducted through state-owned corporations or other legally distinct bodies.

The remaining chapters address the power to amend Part I, savings and excluded matters, statutory interpretation, foreign judgments, heads of state and related persons, and certificates concerning facts of state. Chapter 21’s treatment of foreign judgments is particularly relevant to private international law, although the statutory mechanism considered there appears never to have been used against the United Kingdom. More generally, the relationship between foreign judgments and state immunity raises difficult questions: recognition of a judgment, adjudicatory jurisdiction over the state and execution against state property are separate stages and may be governed by different requirements.

Overall, this is a highly specialised work. A sound knowledge of public international law—and, to a lesser extent, private international law—is helpful if the reader is to appreciate its analysis fully. Yet the book is also valuable precisely because it demonstrates that the boundary between the two disciplines is permeable. State immunity is founded in public international law, but it operates through the machinery of private litigation. It affects jurisdiction, choice-of-court agreements, employment disputes, arbitration, service, foreign judgments and enforcement.

Before reading the book, I was sceptical about the practical force of public international law, particularly because powerful states sometimes appear able to disregard its principles without meaningful consequences. This book has caused me to reconsider that view. Public international law is not confined to prominent disputes about war or territorial sovereignty. In the field of jurisdictional immunities, it performs an important stabilising function by mediating between access to national courts and the sovereign equality of states. It thereby contributes to international comity and the orderly conduct of relations among states.

For a private international lawyer, the book’s lasting lesson is that ordinary rules of transnational litigation cannot be applied to foreign states without accounting for their sovereign character. Conversely, public international law principles of immunity acquire practical effect through domestic rules governing civil proceedings. Dickinson and Thompson’s work illuminates that relationship with considerable depth. It merits close attention from practitioners and scholars working on cross-border litigation, international commercial arbitration, employment disputes involving states, and the recognition and enforcement of judgments and awards. It is also a book to which I expect to return as my understanding of the relationship between public and private international law continues to develop.

The Annual Conference of the American Association of Private International Law (ASADIP) will take place from 20 to 23 October 2026 in San Salvador (El Salvador). It is entitled the transformative spirit of Private International Law (“La vocación transformadora del Derecho Internacional Privado”).

The deadline to submit posters has been extended to 13 September 2026.

The second issue of 2026 of the Rivista di diritto internazionale privato e processuale (RDIPP) is out. In addition to recent case law and other materials, it features three contributions. Cristina Campiglio, Il volto «umano» del diritto internazionale privato: la disciplina dell’autodeterminazione di genere (The “Human” Face of Private International Law: The Regulation of Gender […]

The fourth book in the European Association of Private International Law series is out. Published by Edward Elgar, this book is the outcome of the second edition of the EAPIL Winter School in Private International Law. The contributions are based on the lectures given during the course, which took place at the Department of Law, […]

The European Commission has just opened a public consultation on the Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters (recast). A call for evidence is available here (which includes the three policy options being considered).

As indicated in the call for evidence, “[t]he aim of the consultation is to collect evidence, experiences and opinions from relevant stakeholders. These contributions will inform the analysis and assessment of the performance of the Regulation in its current form, the shortcomings identified, possible policy options to address them and their expected impacts.”

The public consultation will run from 1 September 2026 until 24 November 2026 (midnight Brussels time).

The fifth issue of IPRax (Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts) for 2026 was published on 1 September. The following advance abstracts have been kindly provided by the editor of the journal. B. Steinrötter, The UNIDROIT Conflict-of-Laws Rule on the Law of Crypto-Assets. A contribution to the classification of Principle 5 of the UNIDROIT Principles […]

September 2026 promises to be a busy month for the Court of Justice of the European Union. A series of significant judgments, Advocate General opinions, and a noteworthy arbitration-related hearing will address questions ranging from the scope of the Rome II Regulation and cross-border succession disputes to the interpretation of the European Small Claims Procedure, […]