Agrégateur de flux

Written by Duncan Fairgrieve (BIICL;Université de Paris Dauphine) and Solenn Le Tutour (avocat, Barreau de Paris)

When the French Government announced in February this year plans to launch an “English” Commercial court in Paris, eyebrows were raised and, it is fair to say, an element of skepticism expressed in the common law world as to whether such a development would really prove to be a serious competitor to the Commercial Courts on Fetter Lane in London.In what some might say was an uncharacteristically pragmatic fashion, collective judicial sleeves in Paris were pulled up however and the project taken forward with some alacrity. With broad support from the legal and political class given what is seen as re-shuffling of cards post-Brexit, the project was accelerated to such an extent that the first hearing of the new Chamber took place yesterday afternoon. The Court, which is an International Chamber of the Paris Court of Appeal, will hear appeals from the international chamber of the first instance Commercial court in Paris which has been in operation – albeit rather discretely – for almost a decade.

Setting aside the PR and legal spin, the procedural innovations of the new International Chamber are in fact quite radical. The headline-grabbing change is of course the use of English. Proceedings can take place in languages other than French, including English, and indeed it has recently been confirmed by the Court that non-French lawyers will also be granted rights of audience to appear before the International Chamber, as long as accompanied by a lawyer called to the Paris Bar. This is of course a major change in a normally very traditional French institution, though it is interesting to note that written submissions and pleadings as well as the resultant judgments will be in French (and officially translated into English).

Case management is to be stream-lined as well. Gone will be the rather languorous meandering French appellate procedure and in will be ushered a new highly case-managed equivalent with the parties and judge settling a timetable at the outset with fixed dates for filing written submissions, as well as – strikingly – the actual date of the ultimate judgment being set in stone, usually within 6 months of the first case-management hearing.

A minor revolution has also occurred in terms of the hearing. The approach will mean that the hearings will be more detailed, with the Court placing an emphasis on oral submissions, over and above the traditionally document-based approach where the judicial dossier takes precedence. There is even provision for the cross-examination of witnesses and experts during the hearing, something that rarely occurs in France outside the criminal arena.

Indications are also that there might even be a more fundamental change in the style of judicial judgments handed down by the International Chamber. At a recent seminar at the Paris Bar, the first judge assigned to the Chamber noted that there would be a deliberate attempt to ensure the judgments set out in more detail the reasoning of the Court, and a greater attention to legal certainty in terms of following previous case law – itself a very interesting potential shift in a legal system which has not traditionally adhered to any form of judicial precedent.

Some have also talked of allowing a more expansive approach to the judicially-sanctioned disclosure of documents – a simplified form of discovery where litigating parties are forced to communicate inconvenient files to the other side – which is all the more surprising as often lampooned by French commentators as one of the misdeeds of “American” style litigation.

Whilst this might not all add up to a complete judicial revolution, the changes in France are significant, and along with similar announcements in Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Brussels, it is clear that there is an attempt across Europe – albeit only an attempt at this stage – to challenge the hegemony of English courts in international commercial litigation.

France / Parlement
Droit institutionnel
L’avocat général Wathelet propose à la Cour de n’annuler que l’acte par lequel le président du Parlement a constaté à Bruxelles et non à Strasbourg que le budget général de l’Union de 2017 était définitivement adopté

Wirtschaftsakademie Schleswig-Holstein
Rapprochement des législations
L’administrateur d’une page fan sur Facebook est conjointement responsable avec Facebook du traitement des données des visiteurs de sa page

Coman e.a.
Citoyenneté européenne
La notion de « conjoint », au sens des dispositions du droit de l’Union sur la liberté de séjour des citoyens de l’Union et des membres de leur famille, comprend les conjoints de même sexe

Mukarrum Ahmed (Lancaster University) has posted an article titled, The Nature and Enforcement of Choice of Law Agreements on SSRN. It can be freely accessed at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3177512.

This is a companion article on choice of law agreements to the author’s recent book titled The Nature and Enforcement of Choice of Court Agreements: A Comparative Study (Oxford, Hart Publishing 2017). The final version of this article will appear in the Journal of Private International Law.

The abstract of the article is reproduced below:

This article seeks to examine the fundamental juridical nature, classification and enforcement of choice of law agreements in international commercial contracts. At the outset, it will be observed that the predominance of jurisdictional disputes in international civil and commercial litigation has pushed choice of law issues to the periphery. The inherent dialectic between the substantive law paradigm and the internationalist paradigm of party autonomy will be harnessed to provide us with the necessary analytical framework to examine the various conceptions of such agreements and aid us in determining the most appropriate classification of a choice of law agreement. A more integrated and sophisticated understanding of the emerging transnationalist paradigm of party autonomy will guide us towards a conception of choice of law agreements as contracts, albeit contracts that do not give rise to promises inter partes. This coherent understanding of both the law of contract and choice of law has significant ramifications for the enforcement of choice of law agreements.

The 2018 Asia Pacific Colloquium of the Journal of Private International Law (JPIL) will be held on Monday 10 December 2018 at the Law Faculty of Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan.

Scholars, researchers, legal practitioners and other interested persons are now invited to submit abstracts in English of paper proposals for presentation at the Colloquium.  While proposals for papers to be presented at the Colloquium may be on any topic, they must have as their primary focus the private international law aspects of the chosen topic.  Recent PhD graduates in the Asia Pacific region are especially invited to submit proposals.

The Colloquium will be in the form of an all-day roundtable discussion conducted in English.  Persons whose papers have been chosen will deliver their presentations in turn.  Each presentation will run for 20 minutes and be followed by a discussion of 20 minutes in which all participants in the Colloquium (including members of the JPIL’s Editorial Board and specially-invited private international law academics from the Asia-Pacific region) will comment on the presentation. The objective of the Colloquium will be to assist presenters to improve their papers with a view to eventual publication, possibly in the JPIL subject to acceptance by its Editorial Board.

Abstracts are to be submitted by email to ntakasug@mail.doshisha.ac.jp no later than 5 pm (Japan time) on 1 July 2018.  Abstracts should be accompanied by cvs and contact details of the person making the submission.  Persons whose abstracts have been accepted will be informed accordingly by 15 July 2018.  Such persons will be expected to submit their full papers in PDF format by email to ntakasug@mail.doshisha.ac.jp no later than 5 pm (Japan time) on 1 October 2018.  Papers should be in English and between 4,000 and 10,000 words in length (inclusive of footnotes).  Accepted papers will be circulated in advance among those taking part in the Colloquium.  Persons who have not heard from the Colloquium organisers by 15 July 2018 should assume that their submissions have not been accepted.

Persons selected to make presentations should note that they will be wholly responsible for their travel to and from, and their accommodation in, Kyoto for the Colloquium.  Neither the JPIL nor the Faculty of Law Doshisha University are in a position to provide any funding in respect of a selected person’s expenses.  Further inquiries may be addressed to Professor Naoshi Takasugi at ntakasug@mail.doshisha.ac.jp.

The University of Milan (Department of International, Legal, Historical and Political Studies) will host on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 June 2018 the Summer School in International Financial Law. Participation is free of charge, but registration is compulsory at Eventbrite. The sessions will be held in English with simultaneous translation into Italian. Here is the programme (available for download):

Thursday 21 June 2018 – 14h00

14h30 Welcome Address

• Giuseppe De Luca, Deputy-Rector, University of Milan
• Ilaria Viarengo, Director of the Department of International, Legal, Historical and Political Studies

15h00 Cross-Border Company Matters

Chair: Manlio Frigo, University of Milan

• The EU Proposal for a Directive on Cross-Border Conversions, Mergers and Divisions (Bartlomiej Kurcz, DG Justice and Consumers, European Commission)
• A German Perspective (Leonhard Hübner, University of Heidelberg)
• An Italian Private International Law Perspective (Francesca C. Villata, University of Milan)
• Italian and Comparative Corporate Law Perspectives (Marco Ventoruzzo, Bocconi University)

General discussion (with the participation of Maria Vittoria Fuoco, Department on the Functioning of the Judiciary, Italian Ministry of Justice)

– – –

Thursday 21 June 2018 – 17h30

17h30 Taking Security over Shares and Other Financial Securities

Chair: Giovanna Adinolfi, University of Milan

• Investors Rights in Securities and Shareholdings in the Post-CSDR Era (Christina Tarnanidou, University of Athens of Economics and Business, Rokas, Athens)
• Securities settlement through T2S (Aranzazu Ullivarri Royuela, BME Post Trade Services, Madrid)

General discussion

– – –

Friday 22 June 2018 – 9h30

9h30 Financial Collaterals and Bonds

Chair: Giovanna Adinolfi, University of Milan

• Cross-Border Financial Collateral within the Eurosystem (Klaus Loeber, Market Infrastructures and Payments, European Central Bank)
• Bonds Issuance (Matthias Lehmann, Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn)

General discussion

10h45 – 13h00 The Proposal on the law applicable to the third-party effects of assignments of claims

Chair: Francesca C. Villata, University of Milan

• Presentation of the Proposal (Maria Vilar-Badia, DG Justice and Consumers, European Commission)
• Factoring (Christine Van Gallebaert, Université Paris 2 Panthéon-Assas, Jones Day, Paris)
• Collateralization (Joanna Perkins, Financial Markets Law Committee, London)

General discussion

– – –

Friday 22 June 2018 – 14h00

14h00 – 17h00 The Proposal on the law applicable to the third-party effects of assignments of claims

Chair: Stefania Bariatti, University of Milan

• Securitization (Gilles Cuniberti, University of Luxembourg)
• Selected practical issues (Francisco Garcimartín Alférez, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Linklaters, Madrid)
• The Relationship with the EU Regulation on Cross-Border Insolvency (Stefania Bariatti, University of Milan, Chiomenti, Milan)
• The Relationship with the EU Rules on the Cross-Border Insolvency of Banks and Insurances (Matthias Haentjens, University of Leiden)

General discussion – Closing Remarks

(Many thanks to Prof. Francesca Villata for the tip-off)

I post this item mostly as a point of reference for discussions on mandatory law, employment disputes, and the use of arbitral tribunals to circumvent limitations in domestic litigation.

In FC Black Stars Basel 4A_7/2018, the Swiss Supreme Court held in April that mandatory Swiss law on limited arbitrability of domestic employment disputes, cannot be circumvented by submitting dispute to international arbitration. Schellenberg Witmer have succinct analysis here.

Note in particular 2.3.3:

Vor diesem Hintergrund erscheint es zur Vermeidung von Wertungswidersprüchen folgerichtig, den in Art. 341 OR angeordneten Schutz der sozial schwächeren Partei im Rahmen der Beurteilung der freien Verfügbarkeit nach Art. 354 ZPOinsoweit in das Prozessrecht hinein zu verlängern, als Schiedsvereinbarungen nicht uneingeschränkt zugelassen werden

Geert.

 

En application de l’article 36 de l’accord de coopération en matière de justice du 24 avril 1961 liant la France et le Burkina Faso, une décision prononcée dans ce pays ne peut pas obtenir l’exequatur en France dès lors que le contrat litigieux comportait une clause attributive de juridiction désignant un tribunal français et que le juge burkinabé était donc dépourvu de compétence indirecte.

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