UK Government Prepares to Ratify the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention

It was widely reported (including on this blog) that the UK Government signed the 2019 Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters on 12 January 2024.

The Government is now preparing to ratify the convention. On 15 and 16 January, it made ministerial statements to the House of Commons and the House of Lords announcing the signing of the convention. On 25 March 2024, it laid the convention before Parliament (see here and here), which is, pursuant to the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, a necessary step before ratification can occur. The period for Parliament to object to the ratification of the convention expires on 16 May.

The Government also prepared a draft statutory instrument and the Civil Procedure Rule Committee amended the Civil Procedure Rules to facilitate the implementation of the convention into UK law. It is not expected that Parliament will object to the ratification of the convention. Therefore, the UK is likely to become the 30th contracting party (ie after the EU, EU Member States (with the exclusion of Denmark), Ukraine and Uruguay) bound by the convention in the very near future.