This article deals with the recent Convention on the service in the Member States of the European Union of judicial and extra-judicial documents in civil or commercial matters, signed in Brussels in 1997. Firstly a brief analysis is given of problems which may occur whenever a legal document concerning civil litigation or enforcement of a judgment has to be formally served in another country. This introduction is followed by an overview of how the Hague Convention on Service Abroad of 1965 has dealt with these problems. Although generally speaking successful in solving some of the major problems, the Hague Convention appeared to be often too cumbersome for the traffic of documents between neighbouring States participants in an Internal Market. Therefore especially for this Internal Market a new Convention was developed in the framework of the judicial co-operation in civil matters, referred to in the Maastricht Treaty. The article focuses on this new Convention. Its main result was the establishment of direct transmission between decentralised agencies of the documents concerned. Also in some other aspects such as the use of modern technical means of transmission, use of languages, short deadlines, the new Convention is an important further step towards more efficiency in this area, although the final result of the negotiations showed also some insufficiencies. It is up to legal practice to make the new provisions really work.
European Review of Private Law