Harmonising insolvency law in the EU: New thoughts on old ideas in the wake of the COVID‐19 pandemic

Abstract

While the harmonisation of insolvency law in the European Union (EU) has been a top priority on the European institutions' agenda in the last decade, it is well known that this endeavour has been slow and has often met resistance from the Member States. The COVID‐19 pandemic revealed that top‐down harmonisation of insolvency (i.e., introduced at EU level) has been temporarily halted. The urgency to control or mitigate the economically and financially destructive effects of the pandemic has, nevertheless, forced European governments to adopt domestic strategies and laws in the area of insolvency. Interestingly, however, such measures show that insolvency and restructuring law responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic, albeit largely uncoordinated, reflect a phenomenon of bottom‐up harmonisation (i.e., introduced by Member States) indicating a convergence towards common approaches. This paper interrogates the insolvency law responses to the COVID‐19 pandemic in six European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom). It uncovers the inadequacy of the EU's harmonisation language, and the limits of harmonisation strategies in insolvency and restructuring law. Finally, it promotes the formulation of a wider‐encompassing definition of “legal harmonisation”.

Bankruptcy prediction for the European aviation industry: An application of the Altman model

“…However, the significance of such insolvency law cannot be overstated. Some argue that this is due to the member states of the EU that are more likely to have overprotective behavior on the regulation of sensitive policy like insolvency (Ghio et al, 2021). On the contrary, the United States has achieved more consensus of its member states toward the Chapter 11.…”