Experience of International Unification of Civil Process Reflected in Hague Conventions

Gennadii Tsirat, Doctor of Laws | JVS Law

The claim is filed, the defendant sits abroad, and the case stalls on something mundane: how to serve documents so that the court will accept the service. Then the same problem with evidence held in another state. These two questions blow more deadlines each year than any point of substantive law.

The answers come not from a national code but from the Hague Conventions developed by the Hague Conference on Private International Law. This paper sets out how they are built and how they differ. Published in the Bulletin of the Academy of Advocacy of Ukraine, No. 2(21), 2011, pp. 175–181.

1954 Convention on Civil Procedure. The baseline: service and letters rogatory through diplomatic and consular channels, abolition of cautio judicatum solvi (security for costs demanded of a foreigner merely because they are foreign), free legal aid to foreigners on the same terms as nationals, and no imprisonment of foreigners for debt. Its role receded over time but it still governs relations with states that never joined the later instruments.

1965 Service Convention. The turning point. For the first time a single question of international civil procedure was carved out into its own convention, and for the first time the diplomatic channel was displaced as the principal route in favour of Central Authorities — specialised bodies dealing with each other directly. Under Article 22 it replaces Articles 1–7 of the 1954 Convention between states party to both.

1970 Evidence Convention — the same treatment for taking evidence abroad.

1980 Convention on International Access to Justice.

The practical value of the 1965 Convention is that the Central Authority is not the only route. It also permits:

• service by postal channels directly on persons abroad;
• service by judicial officers of the requesting state directly through judicial officers of the requested state;
• service by an interested person directly through judicial officers of the requested state;
• service through diplomatic or consular agents of the state whose court hears the merits.

The 1954 Convention allowed some alternatives too, but a much narrower list, and only where a special agreement existed between the states or the receiving state raised no objection.

Why it matters. Each contracting state may object to particular alternative channels, and many have. So the question is never what the Convention permits but what the specific state has declared — otherwise service is held defective at the enforcement stage, when it is too late.

The paper was submitted on 10 April 2011. Since then two developments in the same Hague system have changed more for Ukraine than the preceding decade — and both concern not service but recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments.

2005 Choice of Court Convention. Ukraine signed on 21 March 2016, ratified on 28 April 2023, and it entered into force for Ukraine on 1 August 2023. An exclusive choice of court clause naming a Ukrainian or foreign court now has a treaty mechanism behind it.

2019 Judgments Convention. Ukraine ratified on 29 August 2022. It has been in force between Ukraine and the EU member states (except Denmark) since 1 September 2023. A Ukrainian judgment now has a convention route to enforcement across the EU, and an EU judgment the same route into Ukraine — without relying on reciprocity or a bilateral treaty.

Together these two instruments closed the gap that previously had to be bridged by chains of bilateral treaties. The analysis of the 1954, 1965, 1970 and 1980 Conventions holds — they govern procedure and continue to work as described.

Tsirat G. A. Experience of International Unification in the Field of International Civil Procedure. The Hague Conventions // Bulletin of the Academy of Advocacy of Ukraine. — 2011. — No. 2(21). — pp. 175–181. Full text in Ukrainian: original article (PDF, 7 pp.).