The default judgment in the European judicial area.

Summary The recognition or enforcement of foreign judgments rendered by default is regularly refused by French judges ruling in exequatur proceedings. This observation is also found in other Member States of the European Union, even though numerous regulations govern the circulation of judgments in civil and commercial matters between Member States. This study examines this problem in order to understand what obstacles exist to the circulation of default decisions and orders for payment in Europe. Indeed, when one speaks of the recognition of judgments by default, it would be more accurate to refer to the recognition of decisions taken at the end of a default procedure. It is this procedure, rather than the judgment itself, that is examined by the exequatur judge to determine whether the decision should be upheld. This study is therefore firstly devoted to the default proceedings and the injunctions to pay procedures in force in French, English, Belgian and Luxembourg law. The aim is to analyse and compare these procedures in order to highlight their divergences, whether they are conceptual or simply technical. Once these divergences have been identified, this study turns to private international law in order to understand which elements of the default procedures are likely to impede their circulation. The combination of these two perspectives allows, finally, to envisage a progressive approximation of national default procedures in order to facilitate their possible circulation in the European judicial area.