An Introduction to the European Insolvency Regulation, as Made and as Recast (Second Edition)

Abstract

This is the first chapter in the second edition of Bork and van Zwieten (eds) Commentary on the European Insolvency Regulation (Oxford University Press, 2022).

The chapter begins with an overview of the problems of cross-border insolvency to which the Regulation responds (Section I), and an account of the Regulation's historical negotiation (Section II), a history that helps to explain some of the main features of the regulatory regime today. Section III identifies these features, explaining how the text of the Regulation was refined or added to in the 2015 process of its recasting, and highlighting important points emerging from the burgeoning body of case law on the Regulation's interpretation. In Section IV, I turn to consider the relationship between the Regulation and the relatively new European Restructuring Directive, the first substantive encroachment into the design of insolvency laws at the Member State level for debtors in the real economy. Chapter V concludes with a discussion of some of the features of the Regulation that appear ripe for further reform, having regard to inter alia the passage of the Directive.