Cross-border disputes | JVS Law
Ukraine’s parliament ratified the 2005 Hague Choice of Court Convention on 15 June 2021. The Convention became binding on Ukraine on 1 August 2023. Between those two dates lie twenty-five months in which the instrument existed on paper and did nothing at all.
Contents
That gap is not a curiosity. It is the reason a contract signed in 2022 with a clause naming a Paris or Warsaw court may sit on a different side of the line from an otherwise identical contract signed today.
What the Convention obliges courts to do
The Convention on Choice of Court Agreements of 30 June 2005 is short and does three things.
The chosen court must hear the case. If commercial parties agreed in writing that disputes go to the courts of a Contracting State, that court cannot decline on the ground that another forum is more convenient.
Every other court must step aside. A court in another Contracting State seised of the same dispute suspends or dismisses the proceedings. This is the provision that kills the familiar tactic of racing to a friendly home court to pre-empt the agreed forum.
The resulting judgment travels. Other Contracting States recognise and enforce it, and the grounds for refusal are a closed list — no review of the merits.
The design deliberately mirrors the 1958 New York Convention on arbitral awards. The ambition was to give a choice-of-court clause the same cross-border weight an arbitration clause has had since 1958.
How Ukraine got here
Four dates, and only the last one has legal consequences for a contract.
- 21 March 2016 — Ukraine signs. Signature commits a state to nothing except not defeating the treaty’s object.
- 15 June 2021 — the Verkhovna Rada adopts Law No. 1544-IX ratifying the Convention.
- 21 September 2022 — Law No. 2627-IX amends the procedural codes to fit; in force 15 October 2022.
- 28 April 2023 — the instrument of ratification is deposited. The Convention enters into force for Ukraine on 1 August 2023.
The twenty-two months between the ratification law and the deposit are the part practitioners keep getting wrong. A Ukrainian statute ratifying a convention does not make that convention operative between states — the depositary has to receive the instrument. Until 28 April 2023 Ukraine was, for the purposes of every other Contracting State, still merely a signatory.
The European Union had completed the same road much earlier: the Council approved the Convention on 4 December 2014, deposited the instrument on 11 June 2015, and the Convention entered into force for the EU on 1 October 2015. The HCCH status table listed 39 Contracting Parties at the end of 2025; it is the only list worth checking before you rely on a clause.
What changed inside Ukrainian law
Ratification alone would have produced a treaty the courts had no procedural machinery to apply. Law No. 2627-IX supplied it, and it is the more useful document of the two.
The Law on Private International Law gained a new Article 4-1 devoted to choice of court agreements, and Articles 75 and 76 — the general rules on jurisdiction in cases with a foreign element — were rewritten around it. Article 497 of the Civil Procedure Code and Article 366 of the Commercial Procedure Code now expressly allow jurisdiction over a dispute involving a foreign party to be fixed by agreement where a law or treaty permits it.
Read together, these provisions did something Ukrainian procedure had resisted for a long time: they treat a prorogation clause as a source of jurisdiction rather than as an inconvenience to be construed narrowly.
Where the Convention will not help you
The scope is narrower than the enthusiasm around it suggests.
It covers international civil and commercial matters only. Consumer and employment contracts are out. So are family and succession matters, insolvency, carriage of passengers and goods, most competition claims, tenancies of immovable property and rights in rem, and the validity of registered intellectual property rights.
It applies to exclusive choice of court agreements. A clause that leaves the claimant a choice between two forums, or the asymmetric clause common in finance documents where only the lender may sue anywhere, falls outside the core regime.
And it binds only Contracting States. Name the courts of a state outside the Convention and the judgment comes back to Ukraine under the general regime of the Civil Procedure Code — the application for leave to enforce heard by the local court at the debtor’s location, which is exactly the bottleneck the 2017 procedural reform left untouched.
One neighbour is worth knowing about. The 2019 Hague Judgments Convention has applied between Ukraine and the EU Member States since 1 September 2023, and it does not require a choice of court agreement at all. Where the 2005 Convention has nothing to say, the 2019 one often does.
What to check in the clause in front of you
- The date of the contract, measured against the right state. Article 16 ties the Convention to agreements concluded after its entry into force for the State of the chosen court — not for Ukraine. A 2019 clause naming a French court is inside the regime, because the Convention has bound France since 2015; a 2019 clause naming a Ukrainian court is not, because for Ukraine the date is 1 August 2023. The Convention also does not reach proceedings instituted before it entered into force for the State of the court seised.
- Whether the chosen state is a Contracting Party. The HCCH status table is the only authority worth citing here; the list has grown steadily and any secondary source dates quickly.
- Whether the clause is exclusive. “The courts of Sweden shall have jurisdiction” is exclusive by default under the Convention. “May be brought before” is not.
- Whether the subject matter is inside scope. A distribution agreement, yes. The same agreement’s clause on the validity of a licensed trade mark, no.
Where the answer to any of these is no, the fallback is not hopeless — it is simply a different route: a bilateral treaty on legal aid, the 2019 Convention, or the general rules. Each has a different timeline, and the difference is measured in months.
Drafting a jurisdiction clause, or holding a foreign judgment you need enforced in Ukraine?
We check which regime your clause actually falls under — the 2005 Convention, the 2019 Judgments Convention, a bilateral treaty or the general rules of the Civil Procedure Code — and tell you plainly how long each route takes and where it runs into trouble. Describe the situation and we will respond within one business day.
Gennadii Tsirat: profile and contact form →
Practice: Dispute Resolution in Ukraine · Enforcement of Foreign Court Judgments
First published on 7 April 2016, when Ukraine had only signed the Convention. Rewritten in August 2026 to state the position after entry into force; the law is stated as at that date.
The author worked on this Convention long before Ukraine joined it — in his doctoral thesis, in a monograph, and in journal articles on jurisdiction under the 2005 Convention (Bulletin of the Ministry of Justice of Ukraine, 2012) and on recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, and in the textbook International Civil Procedure.