Choice of court agreements under the 2005 Hague Convention

Abstract

The 2005 Choice of Court Agreements Convention is an example of a successfully adopted international instrument of the Hague Conference on Private International Law regulating direct international jurisdiction in civil and commercial matters. The Convention brings in place an international legal regime for exclusive choice of court agreements between parties to commercial transactions and for recognition and enforcement of judgments resulting from proceedings based on such agreements. Given the scope of application (choice of court agreements and recognition and enforcement of judgments resulting from proceedings based on such agreements) and the structure of the Convention, one of its goals is to achieve results similar to these of the 1958 New York Convention of on Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards in the field of arbitration agreements and the resulting arbitral awards. In this article an analysis of the key provisions of the 2005 Hague Convention is made – concerning its scope of application, the effect of choice of court agreements and the recognition and enforcement of the judgment made by a court of a Contracting State chosen under an exclusive choice of court agreement. The application of the Convention’s provisions is
examined in the context of the global-scale project for recognition and enforcement of court judgements in commercial matters and the interaction with the most significant regional instrument on the matter – Regulation (EU) No. 1215/2012. A comparison is made between the key provisions of the Convention and the relevant rules of the EU regulation.

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