La necesidad de facilitar la circulación de decisiones judiciales en el ámbito del Mercosur

Abstract

Recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, together with the determination of international jurisdiction and applicable law in international relations are the main pillars of International Private Law.

Indeed, the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments is vital for the Law of Integration. For this reason it has been called the "fifth freedom", reffered as: "free circulation of documents and judgments issued in the context of integration, being closely related to the four freedoms throughout the integration process.

The current regulation on the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments in the context of MERCOSUR, denotes a lack of  reciprocal trust in the justice of the Party States, to the effect that judgments issued in a Party State are directly recognized in another Party State or that  the minimum possible number of requirements is requested to recognition in another Party State.

Definitively there is an urgent need for reform of the MERCOSUR legislation regarding the recognition and enforcement of judgments for which purpose it is necessary: to remove the requirement of legalization of the documents requested for that purpose; to continue regulating the direct international jurisdiction and to apply a simplified procedure of recognition and / or enforcement of foreign judgments based on mutual trust of the Party States.