ECJ broadly confirms Szpunar AG in Diageo: narrow window for refusal of recognition and enforcement.

As reported when Szpunar AG issued his Opinion, key question in Diageo, Case C-681/13 is whether the fact that a judgment given in the State of origin is contrary to EU law (in the case at issue; trademark law) justifies that judgment’s not being recognised in the State in which recognition is sought, on the grounds that it infringes public policy (‘ordre public’) in that Member State. Precedent for Diageo did not look good and indeed the ECJ on Thursday confirmed the views of its AG.

Where the breach concerns infringement of EU law, the ECJ formulates the test as follows: ‘the public-policy clause would apply only where that error of law means that the recognition of the judgment concerned in the State in which recognition is sought would result in the manifest breach of an essential rule of law in the EU legal order and therefore in the legal order of that Member State’ (at 50). The relevant breach of EU trademark law is simply not in that league (at 51).

The Court does (at 54) seem to suggest – although one has to infer that a contrario – that if one were to show that Member State courts deliberately infringe EU law, even if that EU law is not in the ‘essential’ category, such pattern of national precedent (imposed by the higher courts), could lead to refusal of recognition. However this was not the suggestion made in the case at issue.

Geert.