Commentary on the European Insolvency Regulation Editors: Reinhard Bork and Kristin Van Zwieten (2016, OUP, Oxford), lxxii and 919 pp, £195, ISBN 978‐0‐19‐872728‐6

• Published date: 01 March 2017
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/iir.1272
• Date: 01 March 2017
• Author: Paul J. Omar

Book Review

Commentary on the European Insolvency

Regulation Editors: Reinhard Bork and

Kristin Van Zwieten (2016, OUP, Oxford), lxxii

and 919 pp, £195, ISBN 978-0-19-872728-6

Paul J. Omar*

In an era of globalised trade and the relatively easy flow of business capital across

the world, the need, in the event of adverse outcomes (or anticipating them), to co-

ordinate cross-border insolvencies, whether those of the companies within a corpo-

rate group or the various branches of a single entity, has become a necessity.

Domestic frameworks, often relying on traditional private international law rules,

however palliated by arguments for comity and cooperation between courts, have

been found wanting. International frameworks of the treaty type, bilateral or mul-

tilateral, have been difficult to negotiate and to maintain, as their terms very rarely

anticipate changes in law or the evolution of issues facing practice and office-

holders. Only the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency 1997

(“Model Law”) has a universal vocation to come to the assistance of any country

with rules enabling recognition, enforcement and cooperation. Its paradigm is,

however, modelled on that arising from a European initiative dating back to

1968, but which only saw fruition, after a few dead ends, in 2000 with the enact-

ment of the European Insolvency Regulation (“EIR 2000”). While the travails of

UNCITRAL’s Working Group V has added to the framework surrounding the

Model Law, without, however, disturbing its contents, the EIR 2000 has under-

gone a process of change, mandated by the terms of its Article 46, ultimately lead-

ing to the adoption of the Recast EIR in 2015.

In the wake of the advent of the Recast EIR, a number of texts have appeared

offering commentary and exegesis on its contents.

1

Joining these is a work edited

by two eminent academics at Oxford, also parties to one of the previous offerings.

*of Gray’s Inn, Barrister (np).

E-mail: khaemwaset@yahoo.co.uk

1. See the review, by the present author, in [2006] ICCLR 285

of Bork and Mangano’s European Cross-Border Insolvency Law

(2016, OUP, Oxford) and Moss, Fletcher and Isaacs’The EU

Regulation on Insolvency Proceedings (3rd Ed) (2016, OUP, Oxford).

Copyright © 2017 INSOL International and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd Int. Insolv. Rev., Vol. 26: 122–123 (2017)

Published online 20 March 2017 in Wiley Online Library

(wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/iir.1272