Party Autonomy in International Property Law - Peace Palace Library

12. Party Autonomy and Insolvency Law
12.2.3. Protection of legitimate expectations or is insolvency a
foreseeable risk?
This ‘double test’ has been incorporated in the EC Insolvency Regulation
notwithstanding that in legal writing it was and is often rejected. 10 It unnecessarily
restricts the possibilities of re-establishing the estate for the
benefit of the creditors. The question really is whether creditors or third
parties entering into a transaction with the (later insolvent) debtor should
not reckon with the possibility that the transaction could be subject to reversal
in accordance with the insolvency law of the Member State where
the debtor has his centre of main interests. It is submitted that if the insolvency
law of the Member State where the centre of the debtor’s main
interests is located provides that the act concerned is subject to reversal,
there can be no legitimate expectation that the act would be valid only
because the lex causae of that act, including its insolvency law, does not
allow for its reversal. The opening of an insolvency proceeding in respect
of one of the parties to a transaction in the State where that party’s centre
of main interests is located is a foreseeable risk that should be taken into
account when a transaction is entered into 11 . To this it may be added that,
in my view, even the opening of insolvency proceedings in the Member
10
Cf. Veder 2004 (footnote 7), p. 315, H.L.E. Verhagen and P.M. Veder, De
‘Pauliana’ in het Nederlandse internationaal privaatrecht, NIPR 2000 / 1, p. 5;
R.J. van Galen en J.C. van Apeldoorn, Grensoverschrijdende aspecten van
insolventieprocedures buiten verdrag, in: R.J. van Galen, J.C. van Apeldoorn
and A.J. Berends, Grensoverschrijdende insolventieprocedures, Preadviezen
voor de Nederlandse Vereniging voor Internationaal Recht, Deventer: Kluwer,
1998, p. 130; A. Trunk, Internationales Insolvenzrecht, Systematische
Darstellung des deutschen Rechts mit rechtsvergleichenden Bezügen, Tübingen:
MohrSiebeck, 1998, p. 190; A. Flessner, Internationales Insolvenzrecht in
Deutschland nach der Reform, IPRax 1997, p. 9; H. Hanisch, Extraterritoriale
Wirkung eines allgemeinen Veräusserungsverbots im Konkurseröffnungsverfahren
– Revisibilität ermessenshafter Ermittlung ausländischen Rechts –
Durchgriff – Auf die Insolvenzanfechtung anwendbares Recht, IPRax 1993,
p. 72.
11
The practice of COMI-shifts must be taken into consideration. Relocating the
debtor’s centre of main interests to another jurisdiction will lead ta a charge of
the applicable lex concursus and, consequently, the applicable rules relating to
the avoidance of pre-insolvency transactions. In such cases the protection of
the other parties’ legitimate expectations regarding the validity of the transaction
is justified.
P. M. Veder
267
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