Brussels Convention on Jurisdiction and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, 1968

Before 1968, a French judgment against a German company meant starting again in Germany. Each country’s court decided for itself whether to honour the other’s decisions, on its own tests and at its own speed. Six countries that had just formed a common market decided that this was absurd. Their answer was a treaty that fixed which court could hear a case and promised that the resulting judgment would travel. That treaty, signed at Brussels in 1968, is the ancestor of every modern scheme for recognising judgments between States.

In two minutes

The Brussels Convention of 1968 was a treaty among the original Common Market States that fixed common rules of jurisdiction in civil and commercial matters and provided for simplified recognition and enforcement of each other’s judgments; it was later replaced by the Brussels I Regulation.

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