Danish Supreme Court on the Law Applicable to Traffic Accidents

In a judgment of 9 September 2025 the Danish Supreme Court clarified how Danish private international law determines the applicable law in recourse claims between insurance agencies and vehicle owners after an international traffic accident. The Court confirmed that, in the absence of codified conflict-of-laws rules, the starting point is the law of the place where the damage occurred, which may only be displaced by a clearly stronger connection to another country.

Background

In 2016, two separate traffic accidents occurred, one in Germany and one in Spain. Both accidents involved Danish-registered semi-trailers. The semi-trailers were attached to trucks registered in Poland and Lithuania, respectively, while the passenger cars involved in the accidents were registered in Germany and Spain.

The damage resulting from the accidents were compensated by the German and Spanish insurance agencies. In turn these agencies were reimbursed by the Danish insurance agency that in turn sought to recourse the expenses from the Danish vehicle rental company that owned the semi-trailers.

Whether the Danish insurance agency legally had a claim against the rental company was dependent on what law that should apply to the traffic accidents.

Judgment

The Danish Supreme Court initially held that the issue of determining the law applicable to an international traffic accident is based on uncodified principles. In this respect, it is noteworthy that Denmark does not apply either the EU’s Rome II Regulation or the 1971 Hague Convention on the Law Applicable to Traffic Accidents.

According to the Danish Supreme Court, the law applicable to a traffic accident should be based on the connecting factors relevant to the specific dispute. The starting point of this assessment is the place where the damage occurred (“hvor skaden er sket”),  in the sense that the application of another country’s law requires a strong connection to displace it.

In the case at hand, the Danish Supreme Court found that none of the cases involved such a strong connection to another country that could displace the application of the law in the country where the damage occurred. Hence, German respectively Spanish law should be applied in the cases.

Comment

Treating the law of the place where the traffic accident occurs as the presumptive applicable law is a natural starting point. The Danish conflict-of-laws solution does in that sense not deviate from how the outcome would have been under the Rome II Regulation or under the 1971 Hague Convention on the Law Applicable to Traffic Accidents.

Operating within a similarly uncodified conflict-of-laws system, the Norwegian Supreme Court likewise concluded in a 2024 judgment, previously discussed on this blog, that the law of the country where the damage occurred primarily should apply to an international traffic accident. However, whereas the Norwegian Supreme Court explicitly sought to align its reasoning with the Rome II Regulation, the Danish Supreme Court advanced no such arguments. ,

The absence of references to the Rome II Regulation or the 1971 Hague Convention does not necessarily imply that foreign conflict-of-laws solutions are irrelevant in Danish private international law. After all, international alignment of conflict-of-laws rules remains a central value in private international law that reflects the underlying objective of promoting international harmony of decisions. One could of course argue that the default rules of the Rome II Regulation and the 1971 Hague Convention will often lead to the same result. Nevertheless, the two instruments provide for different exceptions, which may affect the applicable law in individual cases.

From that perspective, it is unsatisfactory that the EU remains divided on what conflict-of-laws rules that shall govern international traffic accidents with some Member States applying the 1971 Hague Convention, others the Rome II Regulation and Denmark applying its own autonomous conflict-of-laws rules.