Case C-868/26, AlbaniaBeg Ambient – can a judgment from Tirana travel on a European passport?
The Brussels regime lets judgments of Member State courts move freely across the Union. It was never meant to do the same for judgments of other countries. The Corte di Appello di Roma asks what happens when a Member State court has already put its stamp on one.
Facts
AlbaniaBeg Ambient Sh.p.k. (ABA), an Albanian company, is the appellant before the Corte di Appello di Roma against ENEL SpA and Enelpower Srl. ABA holds a judgment of an Albanian court against the two Italian companies, which has been the subject of enforcement proceedings in several jurisdictions; the Irish courts, among others, declined to entertain it. The notice says only that the referring court must decide whether a decision by which “a court of a Member State rules on an application for the recognition and declaration of enforceability of a judgment given in a third State” is a “judgment” within the meaning of Article 32 of Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 — the predecessor of the current Brussels I bis Regulation, which applies only to proceedings instituted on or after 10 January 2015. If it is, such a decision obtained in one Member State would be recognised in Italy “without any special procedure being required” under Article 33.
Questions Referred
Must Article 32 of Council Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 of 22 December 2000 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters be interpreted as meaning that the concept of ‘judgment’ also includes a decision whereby a court of a Member State rules on an application for the recognition and declaration of enforceability of a judgment given in a third State?
Sources
OJ notice C/2026/5060 (EUR‑Lex) · Case file on CURIA · Regulation (EC) No 44/2001 · High Court of Ireland, AlbaniaBeg Ambient v Enel [2016] IEHC 139
Comment
Article 32 is drafted broadly: “‘judgment’ means any judgment given by a court or tribunal of a Member State, whatever the judgment may be called, including a decree, order, decision or writ of execution”. Read literally, a decision of a Member State court declaring a foreign judgment enforceable is a “decision” of such a court, and so a judgment. The case law has never read it literally. In Case C‑129/92, Owens Bank (ECLI:EU:C:1994:13) the Court held that the Brussels Convention “does not apply to proceedings, or issues arising in proceedings, in Contracting States concerning the recognition and enforcement of judgments given in civil and commercial matters in non-contracting States”. The rationale is the one behind the maxim that exequatur on exequatur is not allowed: each Member State decides for itself on what terms it will give effect to the judgments of third countries, and a single Member State’s decision to recognise one cannot be imposed on the other twenty-six through the back door of mutual recognition.
The complication is a more recent judgment pointing the other way. In Case C‑568/20, H Limited (ECLI:EU:C:2022:264) the Court held, under Brussels I bis, that “an order for payment made by a court of a Member State on the basis of final judgments delivered in a third State constitutes a judgment and is enforceable in the other Member States if it was made at the end of adversarial proceedings in the Member State of origin”. There a bank holding Jordanian judgments obtained an order for payment on them from the High Court and sought to enforce it in Austria; that order, the Court held, could circulate. The distinction between H Limited and Owens Bank is between a new judgment that happens to rest on a foreign one and a decision that does no more than declare the foreign one enforceable. The Rome court’s question sits precisely on that line, and it is phrased in terms — a decision that “rules on an application for the recognition and declaration of enforceability” — that describe the second category rather than the first.
The likely answer is therefore that a pure exequatur decision is not a judgment for Article 32, because to hold otherwise would let a creditor choose the most receptive Member State, obtain recognition there, and then enforce throughout the Union a judgment that other Member States’ courts would never have recognised themselves. Whether anything in the procedure followed in the Member State concerned — an adversarial hearing on the merits of recognition, for instance — could bring the decision closer to H Limited is the point on which the parties will spend their arguments. For a creditor that has pursued the same award across several countries, the answer determines whether one favourable ruling inside the Union is worth all the others.