Cross-border Debt Recovery Blog
by Marco Sposini
Laywer, Milan Bar Association
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The Court of Justice on choice of court agreements under Article 25(1) and (4) of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012
27 February 2025
The Court of Justice of the European Union, by judgment ECLI:EU:C:2025:120, dated 27 February 2025, in Case C‑537/23 – in proceedings between Società Italiana Lastre S.p.A. (SIL), a company incorporated under Italian law, and Agora SARL, a company incorporated under French law, concerning the jurisdiction of the French courts to hear an action on a guarantee brought by Agora in respect of SIL in the context of an action for damages brought against those two companies – ruled that:
1. Article 25(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters must be interpreted as meaning that in the context of assessing the validity of an agreement conferring jurisdiction, complaints alleging the imprecision or asymmetry of that agreement must be examined not in the light of criteria relating to matters which cause that agreement to be ‘null and void as to its substantive validity’ defined by the law of the Member States in accordance with that provision, but in the light of autonomous criteria which are derived from that article.
2. Article 25(1) and (4) of Regulation No 1215/2012 must be interpreted as meaning that an agreement conferring jurisdiction pursuant to which one of the parties thereto may only bring proceedings before the sole court that it designates whereas it permits the other party to bring proceedings before, in addition to that court, any other competent court, is valid, in so far as, first, it designates courts of one or several States which are either Members of the European Union or parties to the Convention on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters, signed on 30 October 2007 (“the Lugano II Convention”), secondly, it identifies objective factors which are sufficiently precise to enable the court seised to ascertain whether it has jurisdiction, and, thirdly, it is not contrary to the provisions of Articles 15, 19 or 23 of that regulation and does not derogate from an exclusive jurisdiction pursuant to Article 24 thereof.
The text is available here