The impact of the EU regulation on UK insolvency proceedings

✍ Scribed by Gabriel Moss QC

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2002
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 120 KB
• Volume: 11
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 1180-0518
• DOI: 10.1002/iir.103

✦ Synopsis

Introduction 1. Council Regulation (EC) No.1346/2000 of 29 May 2000 on Insolvency Proceed-

ings (''the Regulation'') 1 will actually or potentially a¡ect every type of insolvency proceeding in the UK. This paper will, however, generally con¢ne itself to that part of the UK known as England andWales (''England''). It will not generally deal with the colony of Gibraltar, which is within the concept of ''UK'' but is treated as a separate jurisdiction for the purpose of the Regulation. 2. References to the EU in this paper include Gibraltar but exclude Denmark, except to the extent that it becomes bound into the terms of the Regulation. 3. Since there is minimal case law and little writing on the Regulation and since it is written in a language and contains concepts largely alien to lawyers and judges from the common law world, the views in this paper must be taken to be very tentative and subject to further discussion and thought. 4. The paper does not attempt to deal with every point that could be mentioned on this subject but tries to focus on the principal areas of likely interest and relevance.

II. Proceedings Covered

5. The only types of insolvency proceedings directly covered by the Regulation are set out in Annex A to the Regulation. For England, the listed proceedings are winding up by the court, creditors' voluntary winding up (with con¢rmation by the courtömore of this below), administration, voluntary arrangements and bankruptcy. Schemes of arrangement, even when used as insolvency or reconstruction proceedings, are not listed. However, if a scheme can be described as a ''composition'' and is sheltered by a listed proceeding, such as administration, it seems that once the scheme is approved by the court it will be entitled to recognition throughout the EU: see Article 25(1).