Article 5

The only rule of jurisdiction we considered in Chapter 3 was the rule that the Member State in which the defendant is domiciled has general jurisdiction. We also saw that, if the defendant is not domiciled in any Member State, the jurisdictional rules of the Regulation do not (in general) apply at all. Now the time has come to consider the special rules that apply if the defendant is not domiciled in the State of the forum, but is domiciled in another Member State. If the forum does not have jurisdiction under these rules, it cannot hear the case at all. This is made clear by Article 3, which is set out in Panel 4.1.

The rules of jurisdiction applicable to defendants domiciled in another Member State are those in Sections 2 to 7 of Chapter II of the Regulation. These are Articles 5–24. In addition to rules of a general nature (in Section 2), these Articles contain rules on insurance (Section 3), consumer contracts (Section 4), individual contracts of employment (Section 5), exclusive jurisdiction (Section 6) and choice-of-court agreements (Section 7).

We shall first consider the rules in Article 5 of the Regulation. As the heading of Section 2 indicates, these confer only special jurisdiction (‘specific’ in US terminology): they apply only when there is an appropriate connection between the cause of action and the State of the forum. We shall examine only those rules that are of importance in commercial cases.