The 88th volume of the Book Series Studi e pubblicazioni della Rivista di diritto internazionale privato e processuale – Giurisdizione in materia civile e commerciale nei confronti di convenuti domiciliati in Stati terzi e interessi materiali dell’Unione europea – has just been published.
The author – Edoardo Benvenuti, postdoctoral fellow in International Law in the Department of International, Legal and Historical-Political Studies (DILHPS) at University of Milan – has kindly provided the following abstract.
For some time now, there has been a tendency on the part of the European Union legislator to adopt substantive, uniform or harmonized, legal instruments intended to produce effects even in situations that have significant links with third countries. This phenomenon cannot be described in unequivocal terms, as it encompasses situations that differ in terms of how this ‘external projection’ operates, but which can generally be traced back to the concept of ‘extraterritoriality’. In certain cases, defining the scope of application of the European Union’s substantive private law in these terms enhances the level playing field for access to the internal market, including through the establishment of uniform standards for the protection of human rights that are binding on those operating within it, wherever their production activities take place. The inherently cross-border nature of the phenomena that these substantive rules are intended to regulate determines the immediate relevance of private international law rules as instruments capable of contributing to their practical implementation. However, such substantive legal acts do not generally contain rules of private international law in the strict sense, sometimes limiting themselves to evoking, more or less explicitly, the internationally binding nature of the rules contained therein, the effective implementation of which depends, in any case, on the existence of a competent court within the European Union. Starting from these premises, this book reflects on the scope of the jurisdiction of Member States and the possible impact of human rights protection requirements on its exercise. The study therefore examines the scope of application of the Brussels I-bis Regulation and the residual role that this instrument attributes to the grounds for jurisdiction provided for by the domestic law of the Member States, with results that are not always consistent with the definition of substantive EU law in ‘extraterritorial’ terms. The research continues along the lines of the relationship between issues relating to jurisdiction and those relating to applicable law, looking at the instruments with which the European Union legislator has sought to support the application of substantive rules through the introduction of specific rules on jurisdiction (notably, the General Data Protection Regulation and the so-called anti-SLAPP Directive). Finally, the recent directive on corporate due diligence obligations is taken as a test case for the proposed methodological approach, also with a view to reviewing the current scope of application of the Brussels I-bis Regulation.