Recognition and Enforcement of Decisions of Foreign Courts in the Russian Federation

In this final qualification work, some topical issues of recognition and enforcement of foreign court decisions in the commercial and civil proceedings on the territory of the Russian Federation are investigated. The author considers both the grounds for the recognition and the grounds for the refusal. In the aspects of the grounds for the recognition and enforcement, special attention is paid to the principles of reciprocity and international comity: their application, legal nature, and issues of proof are investigated. The Hague Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Procedure Matters of 2019 is analyzed both in the question of the grounds for the recognition and in the question of the grounds for the refusal. The author proves that the Part 1 of the Article 412 of the Civil Procedure Code and the Article 244 of the Arbitrazh Procedure Code of the Russian Federation require additional specification, including taking into account the Hague Convention of 2019. Thus, it is proposed to refuse the recognition and enforcement in the cases where the decision of a foreign civil or commercial court on an identical dispute has already been recognized in Russia, the decision of a foreign court was obtained fraudulently and when the foreign court that issued the decision was incompetent. The author comes to the conclusion that it is necessary to make changes to the procedural legislation on the basis of the presence of problems and contradictions in the legal regulation and judicial practice. In the work the desirability of rejecting an international treaty and the principle of reciprocity as grounds for recognition in favor to the open recognition regime based on the principle of international comity is suggested. The author takes into account the improbability of such a radical reform, in connection with which the establishment of the principle of reciprocity is predicted to be the basis for the enforcement.