Agrégateur de flux

Written by Fikri Soral, Independant Lawyer, Turkey; and LL.M. student, Galatasaray University, Turkey

The Tatlici litigation continues to unfold as one of the most noteworthy examples of how national courts in Europe are responding to transnational defamation judgments obtained in the United States. The previous commentary examined Malta’s First Hall Civil Court judgment refusing to enforce the U.S. default award of US$740 million.[1] The Malta Court of Appeal’s judgment of 14 October 2025 builds upon that foundation by upholding non-enforcement while clarifying the legal reasoning behind it.[2] The Malta Court of Appeal’s judgment came as the second major development, following an earlier first-round enforcement attempt in Turkey that had already failed on venue.[3]

The Malta Court of Appeal upheld the First Hall Civil Court’s rejection of enforcement but replaced procedural formalism with a more principled proportionality analysis grounded in ordre public. The judges, Chief Justice Mark Chetcuti, Hon. Judge Robert G. Mangion and Hon. Judge Grazio Mercieca, held that the magnitude and moral nature of the award—being damages for defamation—“manifestly” offended Maltese public policy.[4] Such “astronomic” damages, the court reasoned, would have a chilling effect on free expression and thereby upset Malta’s constitutional balance between protecting reputation and safeguarding democratic speech.[5]

The court also noted that the absence of a reasoned Florida judgment hindered the court’s ability to test the applicant’s belated claim that the award represented “real” rather than moral damages.[6]

It is against this backdrop that the Maltese decision must be read alongside the unfolding NEKO 2018 A, LLC receivership before the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, which is a case that exposes how litigation finance now shapes both litigation conduct and judgment enforcement across borders.[7] The Florida proceedings, captioned Mehmet Tatlici and Craig Downs v. Ugur Tatlici—as cited in the Malta Court of Appeal’s judgment, directly link the plaintiff, Mehmet Tatlici, with his Florida attorney, Craig Downs, who appeared as co-plaintiff in the U.S. default judgment awarding US$740 million in damages.

 

Although litigation funding was not part of the Maltese court’s formal reasoning, the Tatlici dispute shows how financial mechanisms behind litigation are beginning to shape the transnational life of judgments. This connection matters for private international law because recognition and enforcement today concern not only the validity of foreign judgments but also the economic structures that propel those judgments across jurisdictions.

 

Litigation Funding as a Governance Warning

As Cassandra Burke Robertson observes, third-party funding externalises litigation risk and encourages high-variance, high-quantum claims that might otherwise settle early.[8] Funders’ capital increases the number of transnational lawsuits filed, raises settlement values, and spreads litigation across more jurisdictions.[9] This tendency is especially visible in defamation and other reputation-based torts, where damages are inherently subjective and national legal systems diverge sharply on what counts as a proportionate remedy.

Maya Steinitz’s governance theory underlines a concern that once funders gain control over budgets and strategic decisions, they develop portfolio-level incentives to pursue outsized awards that maximise aggregate returns—even when enforcement remains uncertain.[10] This creates a structural tension that private international law cannot ignore because enforcement courts are ultimately asked to enforce judgments whose underlying dynamics are driven as much by capital as by legal merit.

The NEKO receivership makes these abstract concerns tangible. In October 2025, NEKO 2018 A, LLC, a litigation funder with an investor’s interest, secured a collateral receivership over its funded law firm, the Downs Law Group, the same firm involved in Tatlici.[11] The receivership order placed all accounts, rights to payment, proceeds, substitutes, and records under the control of a court-appointed receiver and suspended pre-trial deadlines to “preserve resources … without the burden of potential protracted litigation.”[12] This effectively turned litigation receivables into tradable assets by allowing the funder to monetise pending claims and future enforcement proceeds.

Scholars such as John Gotanda and Ronald Brand warn that this financialisation of litigation detaches judgments from substantive justice and proportionality, compelling enforcement courts—like Malta’s—to reimpose those limits through ordre public review.[13] Seen from a private international law perspective, this convergence between capital markets and cross-border enforcement exposes a governance gap: Article 2(1)(k) of the Hague Judgments Convention 2019 explicitly excludes defamation from its scope, while the Convention remains entirely silent on litigation funding. This dual absence, of both defamation and funded claims, leaves national courts to fill that regulatory void case by case, relying on domestic ordre public standards to assess the enforceability of judgments shaped by third-party capital.

Funding Under Scrutiny for Potential Fraud on Court

The relationship between litigation funding and the manner in which a judgment is obtained deserves careful attention. While the Maltese appellate court did not address the issue of fraud, ongoing criminal proceedings in Turkey—where judicial and prosecutorial authorities are examining how the Florida judgment was obtained—illustrate how difficult it can be to distinguish legitimate litigation conduct from actions that are not merely procedural but go to the integrity of the adjudicative process.

In highly financed, cross-border cases, the line between assertive advocacy and excessive pressure can become blurred. When litigation outcomes are closely tied to the financial expectations of external funders, there is a risk that commercial considerations may influence legal strategy or procedural choices. As Steinitz’s governance analysis suggests, such dynamics can create “agency costs,” where professional judgment becomes constrained by the funder’s return-driven objectives.[14] These constraints indicate that there must be increased protection and openness in recognition and enforcement actions to guarantee that financing efficiency does not compromise procedural integrity in the judicial process. In extreme cases, these forces can blur the line between zealous advocacy and alleged fraudulent conduct, which has been a tension made visible in the Tatlici litigation.

Conclusion

The Tatlici litigation illustrates how the ordre public exception has evolved into a constitutional safeguard within the global enforcement of judgments. The Malta Court of Appeal’s 2025 decision affirming the refusal to enforce a US $740 million Florida defamation award and treating “astronomic” moral damages as incompatible with freedom of expression, the court used ordre public as an active tool of constitutional governance. This aligns with the argument advanced by Symeon C. Symeonides, who conceptualises the public policy exception as a constitutional checkpoint ensuring that foreign judgments do not erode the forum’s fundamental rights.[15]

At the same time, Tatlici exposes enduring tensions between litigation finance, procedural integrity, and the enforceability of transnational awards. The claimant’s connection to the US federal receivership shows how financial structures can shape litigation strategy and the formation of judgments, while the ongoing Turkish criminal inquiry into the alleged fraudulent procurement of the Florida judgment illustrates the risks that arise when capital-backed claims intersect with procedural fragility.

The case exemplifies a wider paradox in which a claimant secures an extraordinary foreign award yet lacks attachable assets in the rendering state and faces recognition refusals abroad, so the judgment’s practical value collapses despite its formal validity. The defendant in the US$740 million action now occupies a jurisdictional and enforcement limbo, subject to a judgment that can neither be executed in foro domestico nor circulate transnationally through recognition or exequatur.

Tatlici confirms that public policy, founded on proportionality and constitutional values, still marks the outer boundary of the transnational movement of judgments in a system increasingly exposed to the financialisation of litigation.

[1] Fikri Soral, ‘Tatlici?v?Tatlici: Malta Rejects?$740?Million U.S. Defamation Judgment as Turkish Case Looms’ (Conflict?of?Laws, 28?April?2025) https://conflictoflaws.net/2025/tatlici-v-tatlici-malta-rejects-740-million-u-s-defamation-judgment-as-turkish-case-looms/

accessed 4?November?2025.

[2] Tatlici v Tatlici (Court of Appeal, Malta, 14 October 2025) App ?iv 719/20/1. (“Appellate Judgement”)

[3] Istanbul Regional Court of Appeal, 4th Civil Chamber, Decision No 2025/3701, File No 2025/2327, 13 October 2025,

[4] Appellate Judgement (n 2) para. 53

[5] ibid. para 47-52

[6] ibid. para. 50.

[7] NEKO 2018 A, LLC v Downs Law Group, P.A. (US District Court for the Southern District of Florida, No 1:25-cv-24580, filed 6 October 2025) https://dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flsdce/1:2025cv24580/698527

[8] Cassandra Burke Robertson, ‘The Impact of Third-Party Financing on Transnational Litigation’ (2011) 44 Case W Res J Intl L 159.

[9] ibid at 164

[10] Maya Steinitz, ‘Whose Claim Is This Anyway? Third Party Litigation Funding’ (2011) 95 Minnesota Law Review 1268, 1318–25 (discussing funders’ portfolio-level incentives and the resulting agency-cost problems in litigation governance).

[11] NEKO 2018 A v Downs Law Group (n 7).

[12] ibid

[13] See Ronald A Brand, ‘Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments’ (2013) 74 University of Pittsburgh Law Review 491, 520–28; John Y Gotanda, ‘Punitive Damages: A Comparative Analysis’ (2004) 42 Columbia Journal of Transnational Law 391. Both scholars argue that disproportionate awards, exacerbated by the financialisation of litigation, require recognition courts to restore proportionality through the ordre public exception.

[14] Steinitz (n 10) 1304, 1315.

[15] Symeon C Symeonides, ‘The Public Policy Exception in Choice of Law: The American Version’ (2025) Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts (IPRax) (forthcoming, also to appear in Emory Journal of International Law).

[If you do use the blog for research, practice submission 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.]

I am grateful to Dr Elias Van Gool, postdoc in our department, for his analysis of ASLB we.are.nature.Brussels et al v Région de Bruxelles-Capitale.

Of note is that both Elias and I struggle to find the right terminology for the Dutch ‘verharding’: ie any method by which soil is made impenetrable, typically by concreting it over in the course of construction works. Elias has used the term ‘soil sealing’, any suggestions for improvement will be happily received.

WeAreNature.Brussels: Climate litigation leading to a construction and soil sealing moratorium protecting Brussels’ remaining greenfields

This guest post was authored by Dr Elias Van Gool, FWO Post-Doctoral Researcher in environmental law at KU Leuven.

In the global surge of strategic litigation relating to climate change, few decisions at the national level can today still be considered truly novel. The 29 October judgement by the French-speaking Brussels Court of First Instance, however, is remarkable and worth signaling to readers of this blog.

Claimants – NGOs WeAreNature.Brussels, Bruxelles Nature and 1,330 local residents – sued the Brussels Capital Region (hereafter ‘the Region’), alleging that it was liable for breaching its general duty of care, interpreted in light of established climate science and the Region’s climate change mitigation and adaptation responsibilities. In essence, the claimants argued that continued net increases in soil sealing, which threaten Brussels’ remaining greenfields and other  open spaces, prevent the Region from achieving its own, European and international legal obligations relating to climate change. Given the Region’s knowledge of this issue, its continued failure to adjust its spatial planning to reverse this trend, and the resulting harm Brussels residents will suffer, the claimants argue that the government’s conduct is tortious.

After establishing that all claimants have the necessary standing, the court agrees with them on the merits and rules that the Region’s conduct – in particular its spatial planning policy – indeed violates its duty of care in relation to climate mitigation and adaptation. In its reasoning, the court first refers to the 2023 Klimaatzaak appeal judgement, which had already held that the Brussels Region’s inadequate mitigation efforts breach the general duty of care as well as Articles 2 and 8 ECHR. The court then finds that the Region’s lack of a sufficient accounting of greenhouse gas emissions and removals from land-based carbon sinks on its territory, violates European law, in particular the carbon accounting and inventory requirements under LULUCF Regulation 2018/841/EU and Governance Regulation 2018/1999/EU. Finally, the court observes that the Region’s remaining open land and unsealed surfaces continue to disappear and that this is made possible by the Region’s current spatial planning, which the court indeed considers as obsolete for successful climate mitigation and adaptation.

The decision is notable for how it recognizes that both climate mitigation and adaptation depend on adequate spatial planning to preserve and strengthen nature-based solutions. The Region’s diminishing green areas do serve as carbon sinks, which to a limited extent help to abate global climate change. For residents, land use is of course even more directly important for adaptation purposes, where the causal link between the government’s conduct and resulting harm is undeniably much stronger. While the decision focuses on flood risks, local residents are also vulnerable to heat stress and to a lesser extent droughts. These are all risks green infrastructure and unsealed surface areas help to mitigate, especially in an urban environment.

The most remarkable aspect of this decision is of course the injunction: a judicial moratorium on further construction and soil-sealing activities. Comparative overviews suggest that this is truly a novelty in global climate litigation.

Nevertheless, it is worth emphasizing that this injunction is limited in several respects. First, it only applies to non-built-up areas of more than 0.5 hectares. Second, the moratorium is temporary, expiring either on 31 December 2026 or earlier if the region adopts a new Regional Spatial Plan (PRAS). Third, the court does not itself impose the moratorium but rather ‘orders the Region to take the necessary measures’ to implement it. As my colleagues De Clercq and Dethier point out, this indirect formulation can be explained by reference to both the separation of powers and the legal protection of property rights. Finally, the claimants have neither sought nor obtained a penalty payment, which could otherwise have been used to compel the Region to implement the moratorium.

To provide additional context, the Brussels Region currently lacks a government with no solution in sight, which is a situation that can impact the injunction’s implementation. Furthermore, the Region is facing a serious housing crisis and a dismal budget deficit. The latter is crucial, since a definitive change in spatial planning prohibiting construction or soil sealing in areas where this was previously allowed, will entitle affected landowners to compensation for planning damage. Conversely, the court’s injunction will not be suspended if the Region were to appeal (which in Belgium it can do as of right). It is therefore my expectation that the actual implementation of the injunction will, at best, remain limited to the rejection of individual permit requests for soil sealing and construction activities on the affected land areas. The claimants may, of course, return to court to seek penalty payments, should the Region fail to comply with the injunction. They may furthermore seek an extension of the moratorium beyond the end of 2026.

Notwithstanding these local contextual caveats, the court’s injunction stands and, from a comparative climate litigation perspective, can be regarded as breaking new ground [pun intended]. In this respect, the decision may ultimately prove to be at least as influential internationally as it is on the ground in Brussels itself.

Elias.

The Judges’ Newsletter is an open-access biannual publication of of the Hague Conference on Private International Law devoted to judicial co-operation in the international protection of children. The latest issue tbrings together the contributions presented at the conference entitled 15 Years of the HCCH Washington Declaration – Progress and Perspectives on International Family Relocation, which took […]

Il peut être donné un avis favorable à une demande d’extradition formée pour l’exécution d’une mesure de sûreté en milieu ouvert. La personne réclamée peut par ailleurs être soumise à certaines des obligations qui sont prévues en matière de contrôle judiciaire dès lors qu’elles ont pour objet de garantir sa représentation à tous les actes de la procédure. 

en lire plus

Associació Catalana de Víctimes d’Organitzacions Terroristes (ACVOT)
Espace de liberté, sécurité et justice
L’avocat général Spielmann estime que la loi d’amnistie espagnole n’est pas contraire à la directive relative à la lutte contre le terrorisme

Sociedad Civil Catalana
L’avocat général Spielmann estime que certaines dispositions de la loi d’amnistie espagnole relatives à l’exonération de la responsabilité en matière de deniers publics pourraient être incompatibles avec le droit à une protection juridictionnelle effective

Oti
Autorisation de séjour dans l’Union à des fins de volontariat : un État membre ne peut pas imposer des conditions supplémentaires pour prouver l’existence de ressources suffisantes

PB Vi Goods
Agriculture
Une boisson sans alcool ne peut être vendue comme du gin

Commission / Hongrie (Matériaux de construction pour infrastructures critiques)
Libre circulation des marchandises
Libre circulation des marchandises : la procédure instituée par la Hongrie pour l’exportation des matières premières et des matériaux de construction enfreint le droit de l’Union

Tribunalul Galaţi
Libre circulation des personnes
Un juge accomplissant des tâches relevant d’un poste vacant au sein de sa juridiction, en plus de celles qui relèvent du poste pour lequel il a été nommé, n’a pas droit à une compensation nécessairement financière

The fourth issue of the Journal du droit international for 2025 has been released. It contains two articles and several case notes relating to private international law issues, including the 2024 case-law review dedicated to EU private international law prepared by Louis d’Avout, Jean-Sébastien Quéguiner, Stefan Huber, Patrick Kinsch, Lukas Rass-Masson, Sixto Sánchez-Lorenzo and Michael Wilderspin. […]

Dans le cadre de l’affaire des assistants parlementaires du Rassemblement national, le Conseil d’État s’est prononcé sur le régime applicable au mandat des députés européens lorsqu’une inéligibilité assortie d’exécution provisoire est prononcée à leur encontre. Sans surprise au vu du récent avis rendu sur le même sujet par la juridiction, les eurodéputés concernés ne se voient pas déchus de leur mandat avant toute décision définitive, à l’instar des parlementaires nationaux. 

en lire plus

The German Law Journal has published a Special Issue featuring the proceedings of the international conference on Informed Consent to Dispute Resolution Agreements, held in Bremen on 20–21 June 2024 (see our earlier announcement here).

Edited by Gralf-Peter Calliess and Nicholas Mouttotos of the University of Bremen, the special issue brings together contributions from leading scholars in private international law, international civil procedure, and international arbitration. Contributors include: Symeon C. Symeonides, Nancy S. Kim, Gralf-Peter Calliess, Frederick Rieländer, Peter McColgan, Laura E. Little, Kermit Roosevelt III, Sören Segger-Piening, John F. Coyle, Hannah L. Buxbaum, Marta Pertegás Sender, Stephen Ware, Stefan F. Thönissen and Nicholas Mouttotos.

The collection addresses a central tension in modern dispute resolution: how to reconcile party autonomy in forum and choice-of-law agreements with the requirement of consent, and how informed should consent be, particularly where such agreements are embedded in standard-form contracts affecting weaker parties such as consumers and employees.

The issue encompasses perspectives from both the United States and the European Union, examining questions of constitutional fairness, access to justice, and the legitimacy of contractual self-determination. Contributions trace the historical development of party autonomy, critique the adequacy of existing consent models, examine their outward abandonment while also exploring comparative regulatory approaches to protecting vulnerable contracting parties.

The special issue is available in the German Law Journal, Volume 26, Special Issue 5, and the editorial can be found here. The German Law Journal is a pioneering (Gold) open-access, peer-reviewed forum for scholarship and commentary on comparative, European, and international law, offering free and unrestricted online access to its publications since 1999.

Julien Chaisse (City University of Hong Kong) is the author of Advanced Introduction to International Commercial Contracts, recently published by Edward Elgar. This practical, globally focused book explains how international commercial contracts are structured, negotiated, and enforced across major economies and key trade hubs. Instead of centring on a single jurisdiction, it provides comparative insights […]

[If you do use the blog for research, practice submission 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.]

Operafund Eco-Invest Sicav Plc & Anor v Spain [2025] EWHC 2874 (Comm)  is a truly exciting judgment for many reasons, most of all Pelling J’s entirely opposite view on the assignability of ICSID, ECT awards as compared to Stewart J in the Federal Court of Australia.

The latter, in Blasket Renewable Investments LLC v Kingdom of Spain [2025] FCA 1028, reviewed here by Claudia Wortmann, held [287] ff that neither under public international law (the ICSID Convention and the Energy Charter Treaty): [304] ff nor under domestic Australian law, there is a bar to the principle of assignment of ICSID and indeed ECT awards.

In current English case the claim is one for substitution as claimants, of Opera Fund Eco Invest Sicav Plc and Schwab Holding AG, by Blasket Renewable Investments LLC. The claim failed.

The judge first of all held that Spain is not estopped from making assignment objection in the English proceedings. Before a foreign judgment can give rise to an estoppel, the judgment must be capable of being registered in E&W and that is not currently the position in relation to the FCA proceedings: the order is not yet final under Australian law and Spain has not submitted to the Australian proceedings. The judgment in the FCA proceedings is not final or binding therefore which in and of itself rules out issue estoppel. An additional argument by Spain that there can be no issue estoppel on a point of law was correctly dismissed with reference [29] ia to SKAT v MCML 2025] EWCA Civ 371.

Next however the judge here diverges entirely from the approach in Australia on assignment. Stewart J at the FCA held that there is no basis in public international law to read into the ICSID Convention a prohibition on assignment, and neither is there in in Australian law. [His findings on public international law essentially mean that the notoriously dualist approach of the Australian courts is in fact of little relevance to the judgment].

I am inclined to agree, including with the arguments in his judgment concerning the object and purpose of the Convention. Stewart J [309] ff and Pelling J [42] ff come ia to a different conclusion on the meaning of ‘party’ in A 54(2) ICSID.

I understand Hanno Wehland’s argument, cited in the English judgment, that investment law is a particularly sensitive area closely linked to issues of sovereignty. I also appreciate that this makes assignment of the right to bring a claim as an investor (transfer of standing as it were) particularly problematic.

Yet that is in my view radically different at the enforcement stage where the award effectively has become a money judgment.

Permission to appeal in the English case would seem guaranteed, and in the Australian case it is one as of right (which Spain is yet to effect but has said it will). Upon appeal both judgments might be reversed, either still leading to an opposite approach in both courts or to alignment in either direction.

A judgment of most high relevance.

Geert.

High Court: ICSID, ECT awards are unassignable Exciting issues viz issue estoppel following foreign judgment (Spain not having submitted in the AUS proceedings) & treaty interpetation, customary international lawOperafund v Spain [2025] EWHC 2874 (Comm)www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWH…

— Geert Van Calster (@gavclaw.bsky.social) 2025-11-11T22:19:41.389Z

When I reported Airgas USA v Universal Africa Lines ECLI:NL:HR:2025:1665 on BlueSky last Saturday,  it led to a rather wonderful reply which I am now definitely including in my conflict of laws slides.

A quick note on the judgment (Ekaterina Pannebakker meanwhile also looks at the background here) which for its Rome I discussion is fairly uncontroversial imo.

The relevant clause in the bill of lading (transport of dangerous goods by sea) reads [2.1 of the judgment]

The law of The Netherlands, in which the Hague-Visby Rules are incorporated, shall apply. Nevertheless if the law of any other country would be compulsorily applicable, the Hague-Visby Rules as laid down in the Treaty of Brussels of 25th August 1924 and amended in the Protocol of Brussels of 23rd February 1968 shall apply, save where the Hamburg Rules of the UN Convention of the Carriage of Goods by Sea of 1978 would apply compulsorily, in which case the Hamburg Rules shall apply. If any stipulation, exception and condition of these conditions would be found inconsistent with The Hague-Visby Rules or Hamburg Rules, or any compulsory law, only such stipulation, exception and condition or part thereof, as the case may be, shall be invalid. In case of carriage by sea from or to a port of the USA, this Bill of Lading shall have effect subject to the provisions of the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act of the United States, approved 16th April 1936, which shall be deemed to be incorporated herein, and nothing herein contained shall be deemed a surrender by the carrier of any of its rights or immunities or an increase of any of its responsibilities or liabilities under said Act. The provisions stated in said Act shall, except as may be otherwise specifically provided herein, govern before the goods are loaded on and after they are discharged from the ship and throughout the entire time the goods are in custody of the carrier. The carrier shall not be liable in any capacity whatsoever for any delay, non-delivery or mis-delivery, or loss of or damage to the goods occurring while the goods are not in the actual custody of the carrier.

Choice of court in the bill of lading is for the Netherlands. For choice of law, the Bill employs dépeçage: Dutch law was picked as the lex voluntatis (the law freely chosen by the parties), with one carve-out: for goods carried by sea from or to a port in the United States, the 1936 Carriage of Goods by Sea Act of the United States (COGSA) was chosen to apply. With COGSA the US implemented the 1924 Hague Rules. I understand that COGSA is considered lois de police in the US, for any goods carried by sea from or to a US port.

The appealing party argued [3.1.1] that because COGSA is only part of the law of a State and not all of it, the dépeçage or carve-out is invalid.

The Supreme Court suffices with holding [3.1.3] very sec that under Rome I parties may select parts only of a given State law to apply dépeçage-style. In my view that is clearly correct (and with Rob Rooman I expand on choice of law per Article 3 Rome I in a forthcoming chapter for Pietro Franzina’s Edward Elgar’s commentary on Rome I).

The dépeçage at issue is not redundant, despite parties’ clearly being aware that COGSA is lois de police (overriding mandatory law) in the US. With the clause the application of COGSA is extended even when, such as here, not a US but a Dutch court hears the case. 

The remainder of the (succinct) judgment deals with  issues of ius (alienum) novit curia under Dutch CPR.

Dépeçage does not often reach the courts and for that reason it is worthwhile reporting on it. 

Geert.

EU Private International Law, 4th ed. 2024, 3.37

 

 

L’article 63, § 1er, du Traité sur le fonctionnement de l’Union européenne doit être interprété en ce sens qu’il ne s’oppose pas à la réglementation d’un État membre en vertu de laquelle les émoluments d’un notaire aux services duquel un héritier est tenu de recourir, dans certaines circonstances, pour établir la déclaration de succession prévue dans le droit national sont calculés sur l’intégralité de l’actif brut de la succession comprenant des biens situés dans cet État membre et dans un autre État membre et non pas seulement sur l’actif brut correspondant aux biens situés dans le premier État membre, sans que soient pris en compte les émoluments payés par l’héritier en contrepartie de la déclaration de succession établie par un notaire dans le second État membre, calculés eux aussi sur l’intégralité de l’actif brut de la succession.

en lire plus

La Cour européenne des droits de l’homme poursuit la construction de sa jurisprudence climatique par l’arrêt Greenpeace Nordic et autres c/ Norvège. Elle élève l’évaluation environnementale préalable au rang d’exigence procédurale européenne mais son contrôle demeure hésitant : l’audace des principes s’efface devant la confiance institutionnelle.

en lire plus

Danemark / Parlement et Conseil (Salaires minimaux adéquats)
Politique sociale
La Cour confirme la validité d’une grande partie de la directive relative à des salaires minimaux adéquats dans l’Union européenne

A new issue of ZEuP – Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht is now available and includes contributions on EU private law, comparative law and legal history, legal unification, private international law, and individual European private law regimes. The full table of content can be accessed here: https://rsw.beck.de/zeitschriften/zeup.

The following contributions might be of particular interest for the readers of this blog:

• Mathias Reimann: The Elusive Goal of Private Law Unification – The Creation, Implementation, and Effect of Uniform Laws in the United States and Potential as a Model for Europe
  Mathias Reimann on The Elusive Goal of Private Law Unification – The Creation, Implementation, and Effect of Uniform Laws in the United States and Potential as a Model for Europe as an examination of how, in the United States, the core of private law is left to the individual states and thus often, and at times highly, diverse. A prominent vehicle for achieving greater uniformity has been the drafting and adoption of uniform and model laws, mainly under the auspices of the National Conference of Commissioners for Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL), now more commonly called the Uniform Law Commission (ULC). Since its foundation in 1892, this institution has produced hundreds of such laws and presented them to the state legislatures for enactment. While some have been (almost) universally adopted, most notoriously the Uniform Commercial Code, such success is far more the exception than the rule – the majority of uniform laws have been enacted by, at best, a small minority of states and, thus, failed significantly to enhance legal uniformity. Even where a statute’s text has been widely adopted, it is unclear how much uniformity that has created in terms of actual practical outcomes. On the whole, the uniform law movement has somewhat diminished, but it has not broadly overcome, the diversity of American private law. Its mediocre track record suggests that the uniform law approach would scarcely be a suitable model for the unification of private law in Europe; this is especially true since the conditions for producing, adopting, and uniformly interpreting such laws are much less favorable here than in the United States.
• Stefan Thönissen: Die Kommunikation der obersten Gerichte
  Stefan Thönissen on Die Kommunikation der obersten Gerichte as an exploration of how the relevance of supreme courts’ communication of their decisions is closely connected with the purpose of contributing to legal development and unification. Although this purpose is – to different degrees – common to all supreme courts, the way they communicate through their decisions significantly differs. In recent years, there have been substantial developments. However, these developments have not necessarily led to a convergence.
• Matteo Bruno Fontana: Die verjährungshemmende Wirkung europäischer Kollektivklagen nach Umsetzung der Verbandsrichtlinie
  Matteo Bruno Fontana on Die verjährungshemmende Wirkung europäischer Kollektivklagen nach Umsetzung der Verbandsrichtlinie as an analysis of how the new Consumer Rights Enforcement Act (VDuG) empowers consumer associations to bring representative redress actions (Sec. 14 et seq. VDuG). While the suspension of the limitation period by representative actions brought before a domestic German court is addressed in detail in Sec. 204a (1) German Civil Code (BGB), the suspensory effect of a foreign collective action is only partially governed by Sec. 204a (2) BGB. Against the backdrop of the discussion on the suspensory effect of individual actions brought in a foreign forum, this article lays out why foreign collective redress actions should be deemed to have a suspensory effect on the limitation period under German substantive law.

The volume also features to book reviews related to private international law:

• Alan Brown reviews Jens M. Scherpe/Stephen Gilmore (eds): Family Matters: Essays in Honour of John Eekelaar (Intersentia 2022)
• Tobias Lutzi reviews Eva Jueptner: A Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Judgments. Why did the Judgments Project (1992–2001) Fail? (Intersentia 2024)