Only five months after the UK Brexit Referendum the first (German) book dealing with the legal consequences of Brexit has been published (“Brexit und die juristischen Folgen, Nomos 2017, ISBN 978-3-8487-3564-8). Edited by Malte Kramme, Christian Baldus and Martin Schmidt-Kessel the book discusses the effects Brexit will have on European private and economic law, notably contract law, corporate law, capital markets law, tax law, labour law, competition law and consumer law.
The most interesting chapter for readers of this blog is the chapter by Johannes Ungerer from the University of Bonn. It deals with the effects of Brexit on the Brussels I Regulation and other Regulations on European private international law and can be downloaded here free of charge.
Ungerer shows that there can be no doubt that Brexit will have considerable effects on jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement of judgments in Europe. Particularly, this concerns the Brussels regime, which threatens to fall back from the modern Recast Regulation to the outdated 1968 Convention developed for relations between the UK and the then EEC Member States. Considering that no transition rules are in existence, this fall back could only be prevented by the withdrawal agreement, which is likely to be negotiated. An alternative might be the UK’s accession to the 2007 Lugano Convention (and perhaps rejoining EFTA). The Hague Conventions are expected to be maintained where applicable in international legal proceedings. As for choice of law,
the Rome regime for contracts should basically remain unchanged, yet for non-contractual obligations there might be the risk of legal uncertainty. With regard to international insolvency, the domestic regimes of the Member States will take over from the European Insolvency (Recast) Regulation.