Service of Process

• Author: International Law Group

On May 26, 1997, the EU Council issued a Convention on the service in the Member States of the European Union of judicial and extrajudicial documents in civil or commercial matters. That Convention has not yet entered into force. While that Convention is pending, the Council has issued Regulation 1348/2000 that essentially makes the Convention's provisions directly applicable to the EU Member States. [Editors' Note: In the EU, a "regulation" is directly applicable to all Member States without need of national implementation].

In part, the Regulation (1) requires each Member State to designate "transmitting agencies" for the transmission of such documents to be served in another Member State (Article 2, paragraph 1), (2) exempts all submitted documents and papers from legalization or any equivalent formality (Article 4, para 4), (3) provides that the receiving agency shall serve the document according to the law of the receiving country, or in the particular form requested by the transmitting agency unless such a method is incompatible with the law of the receiving Member State (Article 7, paragraph 1), (4) allows the receiving agency to refuse to accept the document if it is not in one of the official languages of the place where service is to take place or in a language of the Member State of transmission that the addressee understands (Article 8, paragraph 1), (5) permits, in exceptional circumstances, Member States to use consular or diplomatic channels to forward judicial documents to the designated agencies in other Member States...