Suchergebnisse

On 15 March 2005 the European Commission adopted a proposal for a Regulation establishing a European Small Claims Procedure. The aim of the proposal is to simplify, speed up and reduce the costs of litigation concerning small claims by establishing a European Small Claims Procedure. The new procedure will be available to litigants as an alternative to the procedures existing under the laws of the Member States. For the first time, citizens and businesses will have a speedy and affordable civil procedure at their disposal which is uniform in all Member States and in all procedural steps from the commencement of the procedure to the enforcement of the judgment. This Article lays out the main features of the Commission proposal.

In the conclusions of the European Council of Tampere and the Council Programme of Measures for Implementation of the Principle of Mutual Recognition of Decisions in Civil and Commercial Matters, the European Union approved the principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions in order to remove barriers to the 'free movement of judgments'. When the U.S. Constitution was drafted more than 200 years ago, the same problem had to be tackled. Article IV Section 1 of the Constitution was the solution found at the time. This article gives an overview over the state of play of the Community activities concerning the mutual recognition of decisions in civil and commercial matters, seen from the perspective of the U.S. Constitution.

There are numerous publications on the interpretation of Article 30 of the EC Treaty by the European Court of Justice1which for the last 20 years has been one of the most controversial issues in EC law. It is, however, surprising that there is much older, yet strikingly similar, case law of the US Supreme Court which has remained almost unnoticed in Europe. In this article the respective case law of the two courts will be compared. Such a comparison is not only of interest as such, but can also contribute to the discussion about the correct scope of Article 30—which has certainly not yet been exhausted.