CYIL vol. 11 (2020)

CYIL 11 (2020) THE WITHDRAWAL ACT OF 2018 AND THE EUROPEAN JUDICIAL AREA … influence 75 . It can also be assumed that these long years of coexistence will leave their mark on the system of private international law that will apply in the United Kingdom, also because its current judges have trained on conceptions largely different from those of who had them preceded. It is therefore not unreasonable to assume that at least some of them will not have overwhelming enthusiasm for the return to the exercise of jurisdiction on the basis of institutions such as, for example, the forum non conveniens 76 – even though this has continued to operate on issues not regulated by European law – after the utility of written, certain and predetermined criteria for the safety of the international life of people and commercial transactions has been widely verified. In the course of the negotiation on future relations between the European Union and the United Kingdom which should open shortly, it is expected that an agreement will be considered that could effectively replace the Brussels-Lugano regime, for which the interest is certainly strong for all interested parties and which could consist, as anticipated by many parties, either in an ad hoc agreement or in the UK’s accession to the Lugano Convention. In the absence of one of these two solutions, the scenario that appears in the light of the Regulations adopted so far consists essentially in the use of existing conventional instruments, in particular the 2005 Hague Convention on choice of court agreements and, where they exist, the bilateral conventions. It is also possible that any failure to reach an agreement could act as a stimulus to the acceptance by both the European Union states and the United Kingdom of the very recent Hague Convention on the recognition and enforcement of foreign decisions in civil and commercial matters, which could replace Regulation Brussels I-bis 77 in relations between the parties. However, for the reasons already mentioned, it would be a decidedly less satisfactory solution, the implementation of which would require, among other things, a political will and technical times perhaps even higher than those necessary to reach a direct agreement between the Union (and possibly the EFTA States) and the British government. In any case, the role of the Hague Conference and the tools within it developed during its long years of activity could have a positive revival and also stimulate a wider participation of third States for the benefit of a wider diffusion of uniform rules contained in these instruments: However, this seems to be the only positive note in a scenario that could have the immediate effect of reintroducing non-slight obstacles to the international life of individuals and businesses in relations between the United Kingdom and the States that will continue to be part of the European judicial area in civil and commercial matters.

75 LIAKOPOULOS, D. ‘The influence of EU law on national civil procedural law: Towards the adoption of common minimum standards?-La influencia de la legislación de la UE en el derecho procesal civil nacional: ¿hacia la adopción de normas minimas comunes?’, (2018), 46 RGDE 76 LIAKOPOULOS, D. Interactions between European Court of Human Rights and private international law of European Union , op. cit., 77 LIAKOPOULOS, D. The influence of EU law on national civil procedural law: Towards the adoption of common minimum standards? , op. cit.

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