Abstract: The 2001 Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment, with the Aircraft Equipment Protocol, is a major new convention which is designed to provide greatly enhanced security for financiers and lessors of aircraft objects, railway rolling stock and space property such as satellites. While previous conventions have provided a uniform conflict of laws rule they do not address the problem of major differences between legal systems, particularly in their attitude to the recognition and enforcement of security interests.
The Convention’s solution to these problems is radical and imaginative; it is no less than the creation of a wholly sui generis international interest which derives its force from the Convention, not from national law, which is perfected by registration in an International Registry and which upon registration is accorded priority over subsequently registered interests and unregistered interests and is given protection in the event of the debtor’s insolvency. This paper, after describing the sphere of application of the Convention, analyses the nature of the international interest for which it provides and the relationship between that interest and interests arising under national law.
European Review of Private Law