Jurisdiction under the Brussels I Regulation

The Brussels I Regulation contains a jurisdictional regime: the rules which courts of European Union Member States use to determine if they have jurisdiction in cases with links to more than one country in the European Union. The basic principle is that the court in the member state of the party that gets sued has jurisdiction, while other grounds exist, which are diverse in content and scope, and are often classified in descending order of exclusivity and specificity. The original Brussels regulation (44/2001) is with regard to jurisdiction rules very similar to the 2007 Lugano Convention (which applies when the dispute has links to more than one party the convention), containing the same provisions with the same numbering. Numbering -and certain substantial issues- will be different when a recast version of the Regulation will apply from 1 January 2015 (1215/2012).

The general principle of the Regulation is that individuals should only be sued in their member state of domicile. Domicile under the Regulation is not equivalent to the common law doctrine of domicile, but rather refers to a person's habitual or ordinary residence.

The Regulation sets out a finite number of exceptions from this general principle. Most of these exceptions are optional and enable plaintiffs to sue in a place other than the defendant's jurisdiction without requiring them to. However others are exclusive and preclude plaintiffs from suing in a place other than that of the member state conferred with the jurisdiction.

The general principle reflects the maxim Actor sequitur forum rei, or, he who acts (the plaintiff) must follow the forum (or jurisdiction) of the thing involved (the subject of the lawsuit, meaning the defendant). This rule is presented in Article 2(1) (2012 recast: Article 4(1)) of the Regulation that ‘persons domiciled in a Member State shall, whatever their nationality, be sued in the courts of that Member State’. The law leans in favour of the defendant, since it is “more difficult, generally speaking, to defend oneself in the courts of a foreign country than in those of another town in the country where one is domiciled”. Furthermore, Article 2(2) of the Regulation embodies the "principle of equality of treatment" by stating that 'persons who are not nationals of the Member State in which they are domiciled shall be governed by the rules of jurisdiction applicable to nationals of that State'. Although this is the 'general' jurisdictional rule of the Regulation, it only comes after the other articles in hierarchy and allows for many exceptions, making its general character rather relative; however, the latter is still reflected throughout the Regulation in the way how all exceptions to this rule must be interpreted strictly.

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