The 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters has entered into force between Spain and the United Kingdom on July 1, 2025, marking a milestone in the reconfiguration of international judicial cooperation after Brexit. This international instrument seeks to facilitate the cross-border circulation of civil and commercial judgments among the Contracting States, offering a uniform framework that enhances predictability and legal certainty for companies and individuals. The Convention establishes criteria for the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, excluding certain matters such as family law, succession, intellectual property, defamation, among others. It does not affect intra-EU mechanisms regulated by the Brussels I bis Regulation, nor does it preclude the application of the more favourable national regime, such as that provided in the Spanish Law on International Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters of 2015. Although its application is limited to claims filed from its entry into force onwards, it is expected to particularly facilitate the recognition of Spanish judgments in the United Kingdom, whose exequatur system is more restrictive. In short, the 2019 Convention represents a significant advance in civil judicial cooperation post-Brexit, contributing to a more coherent and effective legal environment.
The Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters (“The Hague 2019”) has entered into force on July 1, 2025, between Spain and the United Kingdom (which, according to the United Kingdom’s Declaration of March 26, 2025, also includes Scotland and Northern Ireland). It is an international treaty aimed at facilitating the recognition and enforcement of judicial decisions in civil and commercial matters between Contracting States and partially fills the gap left by Brexit on January 1, 2021 due to the absence of international judicial cooperation mechanisms in the civil field between the United Kingdom and the EU Member States (the 2005 Hague Convention on Choice of Court Agreements, with its limited scope of application, has been the only available international treaty in civil and commercial matters).
The 2019 Hague Convention was adopted on July 2, 2019, and the European Union was its first Contracting Party. It entered into force in all EU Member States (except Denmark) on September 1, 2023, in relation to Ukraine, and subsequently became binding for Spain also with Albania, Andorra, Montenegro, Uruguay, and now with the United Kingdom. Of course, within the EU, the recognition and enforcement of judgments between EU Member States continues to be governed mainly by the recast Brussels I Regulation (Regulation EU 1215/2012), which simplifies the process of executing civil and commercial judgments across EU borders. That is to say, the 2019 Hague Convention does not affect the Brussels I bis Regulation.
The procedure for recognition, declaration of enforceability (exequatur), registration for enforcement, and enforcement of the judgment will follow the laws of the requested State. That is, the provisions of the 2015 Law on International Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters in the Spanish case, where the declaration of enforceability requires following the exequatur procedure, and the provisions of The Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments (2019 Hague Convention) Regulations 2024 (SI 2024 No. 713) in the case of the United Kingdom, establishing a system of application for registration for enforcement before the High Court, which may be granted automatically but with the possibility of appeal by the defendant, with different procedural adaptations for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Of course, there will be no review of the merits of the judgment in the requested State and the foreign judgment may produce the same effects as it has in the State of origin. However, certain requirements must be met for recognition and enforcement, for example, regarding the control of jurisdiction of the court of origin (Arts. 5 and 6), and there is a broad list of grounds for refusal of recognition and enforcement (Art. 7) based on the respect of procedural guarantees of the condemned defendant, the protection of public policy of the requested State, particularly regarding respect for procedural fairness and the sovereignty of the requested State, the incompatibility of the original proceeding with a jurisdiction agreement or with judicial decisions of the requested State or another State that may be recognised in the requested State, as well as situations of international lis pendens.
However, certain areas of civil and commercial law are excluded from the material scope of application, such as family law, succession law, carriage of goods and passengers, limitation of liability for maritime claims and general average, company law, actions in defamation and for protection of privacy, punitive damages, insolvency law, litigation on intellectual property, and parts of competition law.
The transitional rule (Art. 16) will prevent the immediate observation of results from the Convention’s entry into force, since the Convention will apply to the recognition and enforcement of judgments if, at the time of filing the claim in the State of origin, the Convention was in force between that State and the requested State — that is, the filing of the claim from July 1 onwards will be considered, not the date of issuance of the judgment.
It is also worth highlighting the compatibility rule with the recognition and enforcement rules under national law (Art. 15), so that the Convention does not preclude the recognition or enforcement of judgments under national law, in our case, according to the requirements and conditions provided in the 2015 LCJIMC, in a rule that can be interpreted as referring to the more favourable legal regime.
Regarding the above, it should be noted that the entry into force of the Convention is of greater interest for the flow of Spanish civil and commercial judgments towards the United Kingdom than in the opposite direction, since the regime of the 2015 LCJIMC can be considered very favourable for the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, and, on the contrary, the English regime for the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments turns out to be sui generis, complex and archaic, lacking a modern regulation of the matter in line with what is common in the jurisdictions of the EU Member States.
In general, the 2019 Hague Convention improves the legal framework of judicial cooperation in the civil and commercial field for international companies and individuals, providing greater predictability, efficiency, and protection in the event of being involved in cross-border judicial proceedings, by establishing a sufficient regime of legal certainty regarding the requirements and conditions for recognition and enforcement in the other Contracting States.
By Miguel Checa, Of Counsel at KINSHIP, Doctor in Law (UCM).
