Brexit: Governing Law, Jurisdiction And Enforcing Judgments

Relatively easy cross border enforcement of court judgments has been a quiet success of the EU. Now that we have the UK-EU Trade and Co-Operation Agreement we are able to report on how governing law, jurisdiction and enforcement of court judgments works post-Brexit between the UK and EU.

Although hailed (by both sides) as a success, the deal that has been reached is paradoxically both 1200+ pages long and rather thin. In particular the deal does not specifically address important matters of civil judicial cooperation, which the UK had been keen to include. The impact for civil disputes is therefore effectively a no-deal Brexit, in which we have lost many of the civil judicial cooperation benefits we enjoyed as a member of the EU. That will remain the case unless there is a subsequent, subsidiary agreement on some or all of these issues - including also whether the EU will allow the UK soon to accede to the Lugano Convention.