The Hague Convention on Jurisdiction and Foreign Judgments in Civil
and Commercial Matters is presently being negotiated by 47
countries and would ensure that judgments of a court in one country
can be enforced by other countries and establish rules for
cross-border legal disputes.
The draft Convention is due for review in June this year and
will be discussed this week at a meeting in Ottawa.
The countries involved in the Hague Conference on Private
International Law drafting the Convention include Canada, the US,
Australia and Japan as well as Europe. Negotiations for the
Convention have been ongoing since 1996 but the development of
e-commerce has increased interest in finalising the text. A draft
document was formed in October 1999.
In Europe, jurisdiction principles are set out in the Brussels
Convention of 1968 which governs the enforcement of the court
decisions of one European country in another. A subsequent
agreement called the Lugano Convention extended the principles to
certain non-European countries in 1988, but the US was notable for
its absence.
The European Union recently agreed to turn the terms of the
Brussels Convention into a formal EU Regulation subject to some
amendment. The Regulation was adopted on 22nd December 2000 and
will enter into force throughout the EU on 1st March 2002.
E-commerce companies are concerned that foreign consumers (as
opposed to businesses) could sue in the courts of their home
country. The draft Hague Convention also provides that the laws of
the consumer’s country would apply, as opposed to those in the
country of the selling business. This is provided for in the
European Regulation.
The European Commission is also considering a proposal,
presently known as the Rome II Green Paper, which covers
non-contractual liability. It provides that the law of a consumer’s
country would apply in the absence of a contract.
The draft Hague Convention is facing many critics, mostly in the US
where the US Patent and Trademark Office has already publicly
expressed its opposition.
