The 2019 Hague Judgments Convention: Enforcing a Foreign Judgment in Ukraine

Dispute Resolution | JVS Law

In 2019 the question was whether Ukraine should join the new Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments. It has long been answered: Ukraine ratified it by Law No. 2342-IX of 1 July 2022, and the Convention has been in force for Ukraine since 1 September 2023.

Since 1 July 2025 the United Kingdom is a party too. For business dealing with Ukraine that matters more than the ratification itself: an English judgment — and English law with an English forum sits in a large share of cross-border contracts — is now recognised in Ukraine on a treaty basis rather than on reciprocity.

Below: when the Convention works, when it does not work at all, and what to do about it in practice.

Before 1 September 2023 a foreign judgment was enforced in Ukraine either under a bilateral legal assistance treaty or on the basis of reciprocity. Reciprocity is an assumption that has to be established case by case, and that is where cases fell apart.

Now there is a treaty basis between Contracting Parties. As at the HCCH status table there are 33 Contracting Parties, including States bound as a result of approval by the European Union.

Two baseline rules in Article 4 govern everything else. There shall be no review of the merits of the judgment in the requested State; only such review as is necessary to apply the Convention. And a judgment is recognised only if it has effect in the State of origin, and enforced only if it is enforceable there.

If the judgment is under review in the State of origin, or the ordinary time limit for review has not expired, recognition may be postponed or refused — but a refusal on that ground does not prevent a later application.

The Convention does not recognise any judgment of any court. Article 5 sets out a list of bases, and it is enough that one of them is met. The commercially relevant ones:

• The debtor’s habitual residence. The person against whom recognition is sought was habitually resident in the State of origin when it became a party to the proceedings.
• Branch or agency. The defendant maintained a branch, agency or other establishment without separate legal personality in the State of origin, and the claim arose out of the activities of that establishment.
• Express consent to jurisdiction in the course of the proceedings.
• Arguing the merits without contesting jurisdiction within the time allowed — the classic trap for a defendant who decides simply to answer the claim.
• Place of performance of a contractual obligation. The judgment was given by a court of the State where performance took place or should have taken place, under the parties’ agreement or the applicable law. Exception: where the defendant’s activity in relation to the transaction clearly lacked a purposeful and substantial connection with that State.
• Immovable property: a lease — the court where the property is situated; a contractual obligation secured by a right in rem over property in the State of origin — where the claims were brought together.
• Non-contractual obligations arising from death, physical injury, or damage to or loss of tangible property, where the act or omission directly causing the harm occurred in the State of origin — wherever the harm itself occurred.

The drafting consequence: the place of performance stated in your contract now carries direct procedural weight. It determines not only where you can be sued but whether the resulting judgment will be enforceable in Ukraine.

Article 2 excludes a list of matters, and several entries are critical for business dealing with Ukraine.

Excluded, among others:

• carriage of passengers and goods — transport disputes, despite this being one of the largest sectors of foreign trade;
• insolvency, composition with creditors, resolution of financial institutions;
• intellectual property — entirely, without exception;
• the validity, nullity or dissolution of legal persons and the validity of decisions of their organs — corporate disputes;
• defamation and privacy;
• maritime matters: transboundary marine pollution, limitation of liability, general average;
• nuclear damage; the activities of armed forces and of law enforcement authorities;
• antitrust, except judgments based on cartel conduct (price fixing, bid rigging, output restrictions or quotas, market sharing) where that conduct and its effect occurred in the State of origin;
• family law, succession, maintenance, the status and capacity of natural persons.

And separately, Article 2(3): the Convention does not apply to arbitration and related proceedings. That is not a gap — arbitral awards live under the 1958 New York Convention, and the two regimes must not be conflated. How the arbitral one works: recognition and enforcement of arbitral awards in Ukraine.

Two provisions guard against reading the exclusions too widely. A judgment is not excluded where an excluded matter arose merely as a preliminary question and was not the object of the proceedings — including where it was raised by way of defence. And the mere fact that a State or a government body was a party does not take the judgment outside the Convention.

Ukraine made a declaration, and it is worth knowing in advance. In the version deposited on 1 December 2023 it states that the treaty is implemented on the territory of Ukraine in full, with the exception of the territories where hostilities are (were) conducted or which are temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation, on which it is impossible to fully guarantee Ukraine’s performance of its obligations as a result of the armed aggression and the introduction of martial law, until the complete cessation of encroachment on Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and inviolability of borders.

The declaration refers to a regularly updated list of such territories — the order approving that list.

In practice this means the location of the debtor’s assets is something to check at the outset, not at the enforcement stage.

1. Check whether your forum is inside the network. The EU without Denmark, the United Kingdom from 1 July 2025, Uruguay. Not the United States, not Russia — there the older mechanisms apply.
2. Check the subject matter. If the dispute concerns carriage, intellectual property, corporate decisions or insolvency, the Convention does not apply at all and the forum has to be chosen on other grounds.
3. State the place of performance. It is one of the Article 5 filters and the cheapest way to secure the enforceability of a future judgment.
4. Do not argue the merits without contesting jurisdiction. Doing so is itself a basis for recognition against you.
5. Wait until the judgment has effect. A judgment is recognised only once it has effect in the State of origin; a premature application costs time, though it does not bar a later one.
6. Compare with arbitration deliberately. The Convention does not extend to arbitration, so the “court or arbitration” choice now has one more dimension — where the outcome is easier to enforce: arbitration or court in a cross-border contract.

Two neighbouring instruments are easy to confuse with this one: the 2005 Hague Choice of Court Convention (in force for Ukraine since 1 August 2023, and it operates where there is an exclusive choice of court agreement) and Brussels I Recast, which does not extend to Ukraine and is therefore a recurring source of false expectations.

Sources

• Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters — official Ukrainian translation on the Legislation of Ukraine portal; Articles 2, 4 and 5 are quoted from it.
• Law of Ukraine No. 2342-IX of 01.07.2022 on ratification.
• HCCH status table — dates of signature, ratification and entry into force, the number of Contracting Parties and the texts of declarations, including Ukraine’s.
• Gennadii Tsirat’s 2019 article on the Convention — Yurydychna Gazeta (in Ukrainian): an analysis written before Ukraine joined.

Updated in August 2026. The Convention text and the ratification law are cited from the Legislation of Ukraine portal; dates, the number of Contracting Parties and the declarations are from the HCCH status table (last marked update 13 May 2025). Membership changes, so verify the status of a particular State before filing.

The author wrote on this Convention in 2019, when Ukraine had only signed it, and served as Ukraine’s national correspondent to UNCITRAL from 2017 to 2022. His work on cross-border procedure is collected separately: books and papers on cross-border litigation and arbitration.