Next year will represent twenty years since the original European Insolvency Regulation came into force. One of its primary aims was to enhance judicial cooperation by providing a stable framework for the treatment of cross border insolvency proceeding in Europe, and to discourage forum shopping practices.
The European Insolvency Regulation was recast in 2017, to clarify the fact that forum shopping is not always harmful, and new rules were set out to specifically target abusive forum shopping practices – such as abusive relocations of a debtor’s centre of main interest (COMI) in the vicinity of bankruptcy, in view of obtaining a more favourable legal position.
As such, Spark is delighted to announce that, together with Tipik Group, we will be carrying out a study on the issue of abusive forum shopping in insolvency proceedings for the European Commission (DG JUST).
The purpose of the study will be to provide the European Commission with evidence and analysis in order to determine whether the safeguards included in the EU Insolvency Regulation with the aim of discouraging forum shopping practices actually met the expectations, or whether there is a need for further action (non-legislative or legislative) in the future at EU level.