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Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments between Greece and Albania
Introduction. The recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments constitute an important subject of private international law. Their significance is particularly evident in family law disputes, such as divorce, child custody, and maintenance, in which the effectiveness of a judicial decision frequently depends on its recognition or enforcement in more than one legal system. In relations between Greece and Albania, a principal legal instrument is the Convention on Judicial Assistance in Civil and Criminal Matters, signed on 17 May 1993 and ratified by Law No. 2311/1995. The Convention establishes the conditions under which judgments delivered by the courts of one Contracting State may be recognised and enforced in the other. By virtue of the superior force accorded to international conventions that have been ratified and brought into force under Article 28(1) of the Greek Constitution, the relevant provisions of the Convention take precedence over the corresponding general provisions of the Greek Code of Civil Procedure (CCP). Against this background, the present analysis examines indicatively two decisions of the Thessaloniki Court of First Instance concerning the recognition in Greece of judgments delivered by Albanian courts dissolving marriages. The first decision also concerns an application for a declaration of enforceability in respect of a provision relating to child maintenance. The second highlights the importance of establishing the final and irrevocable character of a foreign divorce judgment and the need to supplement the evidence before a final determination can be made.
Brazil’s Superior Court Invokes Forum Non Conveniens: Is that Really What They Mean?
This post was written by Luana Matoso, the Head of the Centre of Expertise on Latin America at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg.
On September 1, 2026, Brazil’s Superior Court of Justice invoked the doctrine of forum non conveniens in declining jurisdiction to hear a dispute. It is the first time this court has done so in a transnational case. Does the judgment represent the reception of forum non conveniens into Brazilian law? The answer is less straightforward than the terminology used by the court might suggest.
Recognition of a Kosovar Judgment in Greece
- Introduction. Decision No. 21257/2026 of the Thessaloniki Court of First Instance is of particular interest in the fields of private international law and international civil procedure, as it concerns the recognition in the Greek legal order of a judgment of a foreign court dissolving a marriage, where the state in which that court operates is not officially recognised by Greece as an independent state. The issue assumes additional significance because the judgment originates from Kosovo, whose international legal status continues to be the subject of divergent positions within the international community.
The principal question is whether Greece’s non-recognition of Kosovo automatically precludes recognition of the legal effects of a judicial decision rendered within its territory, or whether such effects may be recognised without prior diplomatic recognition of the entity concerned as a state.
News
Conference Announcement: 20 Years of the Rome II Regulation (Lisbon, 17–18 June 2027)
We are happy to share the announcement for a conference to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Rome II Regulation, to be held in Lisboa on 17 and 18 June 2027.
The full schedule can be found here.
Participation is free of charge; please register via e-mail to inscricoes@cidp.pt.
German Translations of Classical Texts in Private International Law
The history of private international law is in large part a history of scholars. Many of them wrote in Latin, however, and have not been translated to German – perhaps because German scholars of earlier generations were more fluent in Latin than we are today. Some 25-30 years ago, Christian v. Bar and Peter Dopffel published two volumes of translations of texts by German authors between 1500 and 1700. That meant earlier and non-German authors remained inaccessible – including classics like Bartolus and Huber, who had long been translated to English (some in several versions)
Now that gap has been filled by Kristin Boosfeld, a professor at Freiburg and author of a pathbreaking monograph on theories of statutes, and Konstantin Liebrand, a postdoc at the University of Münster. They have, as editor and translator respectively, published a book with the seminal texts by Bartolus and Baldus, Dumoulin and d’Agrentré, Paul and Johannes Voet, and Huber, in Latin original (in one case Dutch) and German translation.
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Conference in Paris on recent developments in the private international law of Arab States, 12 November 2026
On Thursday 12 November 2026, the Centre de recherche de droit international privé et du commerce international (CRDI) of Université Paris-Panthéon-Assas and the Centre d’études des droits du monde arabe (CEDROMA) of the Faculty of Law and Political Science of Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth will hold a conference in Paris on current developments in the private international law of Arab States. The conference asks how these legal systems balance their own legal traditions against the growing pull of shared solutions.