Belgian supreme court holds on gold-plated provisions in Unamar. Appeal judgment annulled, case to be revisited.

Update 26 April 2020 The Brussels Court of Appeal held on 25 February that [19] the relevant Belgian provisions only serve the interests of private parties, not of the Belgian public legal order, hence there can be no question of application of the lois de police exception. The arbitration clause, Bulgarian lex contractus and lack of jurisdiction of the Belgian courts has been confirmed.

Writing a case-note on Unamar is becoming an ever moving target: the Belgian Supreme Court (Hof van Cassatie /Cour de Cassation) held on 12 September, following the ECJ’s judgment in same – I would recommend reading my earlier posting. (Relevant databases, it would seem, do not yet hold a copy of the judgment in Cassatie. Please be in touch should you like one. (Language of the case: Dutch)).

The Court has annulled the Court of Appeal judgment for lack of due justification. In doing so, it (only) refers to the ECJ’s dictum, in full, followed by the conclusion that the Court of Appeal has not duly justified its decision. Now, Supreme Court judgments are not necessarily easy to read: often lengthy and verbatim reference is made in particular to applicants’ legal argument, followed by much more succinct conclusion by the court itself. Interpretation therefore hinges on being able to identify those specific arguments which may have swayed the court. I confess I have not found it easy to do so in this instance.

In my view, the ECJ’s judgment clearly implies a presumption against the mandatory nature of gold-plated provisions: ‘only if the court before which the case has been brought finds, on the basis of a detailed assessment, that, in the course of that transposition, the legislature of the State of the forum held it to be crucial, in the legal order concerned, to grant the commercial agent protection going beyond that provided for by the directive, taking account in that regard of the nature and of the objective of such mandatory provisions.‘ (emphasis added)

The Court of Appeal at Antwerp had focused its analysis on the correct transposition of the minimum requirements of the commercial agents directive in Bulgarian law. It had referred to discussion in the Belgian parliament, suggesting the altogether limited mandatory character of the Belgian rules from the moment a conflict of laws context is present.

In other words, paraphrasing the ECJ,  there was no ‘detailed assessment, that, in the course of that transposition, [Belgium] held it to be crucial, in [its] legal order, to grant the commercial agent protection going beyond that provided for by the directive. Neither, though, did applicants’ arguments, at least as referred to in the Supreme Court’s judgment, include such detailed assessment. Had there been so in applicants’ submission, I would have assumed the Court would have referred to it.

There is in my view no active requirement for the courts to scout for indications of mandatory character. The default position is against such character. In the absence of indications of detailed assessment (not just one or two references to passing discussion in parliament) by applicants themselves, I believe the Antwerp Court of Appeal has been wrongly rebuked for not having duly entertained such assessment.

The case now goes back to appeal (this time at the Brussels Court of Appeal).  The ball must be squarely in the court of the applicants. They seek to establish the mandatory character: they ought to provide the ‘detailed assessment’ that the ECJ requires, which the Brussels Court of Appeal at its turn may or may not be convinced by. (Please note that the Court does not address at all the issue of non-abitrability, which as I noted, was not part of the reference to the ECJ).

Geert.