In twenty years, there could be a European Federation, a United States of Europe, of which Britain would be a part, with Brussels as the capital. There will be a President of Europe and a European Government; the European Parliament will make laws and the European Court will give rulings. Britain will be a province of Europe, as it was in Roman times long ago. It is therefore vital to understand the nature and characteristics of the EU, to know what sort of entity it is.

The purpose of this book is to contribute towards such an understanding by scrutinizing the Union from the constitutional and legal angle. It looks, for instance, at whether the European Court behaves as a court ought to behave; at the problems caused by the vague and elastic nature of Community law; at whether the division of power between the Union and the Member States is based on any sort of principle, and, if so, whether that principle is consistently applied; at me enforcement of Community law and the problems caused by the different levels of compliance in different Member States; and, finally, at the issue of whether Member States have ceded their sovereignty. These issues raise questions which we must ask, and try to answer.

This book will be of interest not only to experts in Community law, but to all lawyers -- indeed, to non-lawyers as well -- who want to understand the Community. To make this possible, an introductory chapter has been added to provide the necessary background.

This is the first text to address all the instruments that will govern choice-of-court agreements in Europe and to engage in a practical discussion of their mutual relationship. The existing common law, which has dominated discussion of this subject for so long, will become less significant as European and international instruments become more widely applicable. The consequences of this, both for practitioners and business persons engaging in international transactions, are explained by thematic chapters covering all major issues affected. The work opens with an introduction to the components of a choice-of-court agreement and to the origins, principles, and status of the various instruments, making the text accessible to a broad practitioner audience. The scope of the instruments - territorial application, international application and subject-matter application - as well as conflicts between them, are addressed in Part II, which is devoted to guidance on deciding which instrument applies. Validity (substantive and formal), effects, remedies, and procedure are discussed in Part III, while Part IV tackles a range of more specialist areas, including insurance, consumer contracts, employment contracts, companies, and intellectual property. Comprehensive appendices follow, including the Hague Convention 2005 in its entirety, alongside extracts from Brussels I and Lugano, making this a standalone support for any practitioner facing unfamiliar questions in the area.

Examining jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in Europe, Civil Jurisdiction and Judgments in Europe: The Brussels I Regulation, the Lugano Convention, and the Hague Choice of Court Convention provides a practical explanation of how these three legal instruments interact to form a coherent system. Trevor Hartley identifies the legal principles that lie behind the individual provisions of the instruments and provides a systematic explanation of how the instruments operate, focusing on real-life litigation problems, and including extensive reference to the case-law of the CJEU. The pace of development is rapid in the field of civil jurisdiction. Since the book was first published in 2017, the UK has withdrawn from the EU and the CJEU has handed down judgments that have changed how the different policies and principles are interpreted together. In this new edition, Hartley continues to examine the extensive case-law of the CJEU and considers the wider applicability of the principles that the Court has articulated. He also illustrates how the Hague Choice of Court Convention will continue to apply in the UK as a means of upholding exclusive choice-of-court clauses between the EU and the UK. The focus of this book is European and international, and explanation of how the three instruments harmonise remains relevant to practitioners and academics based on the Continent and in the UK.