Hybrid | The 2019 Hague Judgments Convention - English and EU Perspectives

About this event

On 1 July 2025, the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters will enter into force in England and Wales. This historic regime establishes a general treaty basis for the recognition and enforcement of civil judgments between Convention States, supplementing the existing national rules and the Hague Choice of Court Convention 2005. Perhaps most significantly, it will provide common rules for the recognition and enforcement of judgments from England and Wales in EU Member States, and conversely, for EU Member State judgments to be recognised and enforced in England and Wales, to some extent filling a 'gap' created by Brexit.

This seminar will address the significance of this development from both an English and EU perspective, examining the main features of the 2019 Convention and considering the opportunities and challenges it presents.

About the speakers' 

Marta Pertegás holds professorial positions at the Faculties of Law of Maastricht University (The Netherlands) and the University of Antwerp (Belgium). Since 2019, she is a Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa) and since 2021, an Adjunct Professor at IE Madrid (Spain). She has extensively researched, lectured and published on international dispute resolution, the private international law of the European Union and the work of the Hague Conference on Private International Law.

Professor Pertegás was a fulltime member of the Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law between 2008 and 2017. Her primary responsibility related to projects in international civil procedure and commercial law, including the adoption of the 2015 Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts, the promotion of the 2005 Choice of Court Convention and preparatory work on the 2019 Judgments Convention.

Professor Pertegás holds a Spanish Law degree from the University of Barcelona, an LL.M. on European Law and a PhD from the K.U. Leuven (Belgium). She was a member of the Barcelona and Brussels Bar between 1998 and 2008 and for years worked as of counsel for Brussels-based law firms.

Alex Mills is Professor of Public and Private International Law in the Faculty of Laws, UCL, and General Editor of the International and Comparative Law Quarterly. He has published widely on issues of public and private international law, including books on The Confluence of Public and Private International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2009) and Party Autonomy in Private International Law (Cambridge University Press, 2018). He is a co-author of Cheshire North and Fawcett's Private International Law (15th edition, Oxford University Press, 2017), and a Specialist Editor of Dicey, Morris and Collins on the Conflict of Laws, with particular responsibility for, inter alia, the rules on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.

About the Chair 

Uglješa Grušić is Professor of Private International Law at the Faculty of Laws of University College London. His expertise lies in the regulation of transnational employment contracts, tortious claims arising out of the external exercise of British executive authority and civil claims against multinational enterprises for human rights violations. He is the author of two monographs in the field of private international law (Torts in UK Foreign Relations (OUP, 2023); The European Private International Law of Employment (CUP, 2015)), a co-author of a leading English private international law textbook (Cheshire, North & Fawcett: Private International Law (OUP, 15th edn, 2017) and a co-editor of an edited collection on the comparative law of civil remedies for human rights violations (Civil Remedies and Human Rights in Flux (Hart, 2022)). His work has been cited by Advocates General of the Court of Justice of the European Union, New Zealand Supreme Court and Court of Appeal and the High Court of England and Wales. He currently serves as one of five main legal experts for the United Nations Open-Ended Intergovernmental Working Group on Transnational Corporations and Other Business Enterprises with Respect to Human Rights.

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