EU Study Group

 
The mission of INSOL Europe is to take and maintain a leading role in European business recovery, turnaround and insolvency issues, to facilitate the exchange of information and ideas amongst its members and to discuss business recovery, turnaround and insolvency issues with those who are affected by those procedures. The association also encourages greater international co-operation and communication within Europe and also with the rest of the world. To that end, INSOL Europe gathers academics, judges, lawyers and insolvency practitioners from the European Union and beyond.
 
Within INSOL Europe, the standing EU Study Group is composed of a research team on comparative law, a majority of whose members are regular attendees at meetings organised by official European and other international bodies (e.g. UNCITRAL’s bi-annual meetings). Members of this Group are active academics, lawyers, insolvency practitioners or national officers. In the course of 2020, some of their work has resulted in the publication of three Guidance Notes on Directive 2019/1023 on Restructuring and Insolvency with the aim of assisting EU Member States with putting the restructuring frameworks mandated by the Directive in place as soon as possible. The guidance notes offer technical insights and policy considerations relevant to national implementations of the EU Restructuring Directive on the key points of classification of claims, voting, and confirmation of restructuring plans, including by way of a cross-class cram-down (Guidance Note #1, April 2020), on the stay of individual enforcement actions to be enacted pursuant to Articles 6 and 7 of the Directive (Guidance Note #2, May 2020), and more recently on procedural features (Guidance Note #3, November 2020). The goal is to offer guidance by insolvency experts to national regulators where no similar restructuring frameworks exist or where equivalent restructuring frameworks do already exist, refining and adapting them to the Directive.
 
INSOL Europe has also recognised experience as a regular contributor to the debate relating to the harmonisation of insolvency laws in Europe. Indeed, in 2014 and as a follow up to the 2012 Communication of the Commission on ‘A new approach to business failure and insolvency’, INSOL Europe provided a comprehensive and condensed report on restructuring mechanisms available at that time in the 28 Member States, together with recommendations by 28 national experts for an early preventive restructuring mechanism (‘Study on a new approach to business failure and insolvency – Comparative legal analysis of the Member States’ relevant provisions and practices’). This report followed the INSOL Europe report published in 2010 and entitled ‘Harmonisation of Insolvency Law at EU Level’ which was prepared at the request of the European Parliament. In particular, this report identified a number of areas of insolvency law where harmonisation at EU level was worthwhile and achievable, including an evaluation as to what extent harmonisation of insolvency law could facilitate further harmonisation of company law in the EU. INSOL Europe was also an invited non-governmental organisation at the European Commission Insolvency Conference held in Brussels on 12 July 2016, entitled 'Convergence of insolvency frameworks within the European Union - the way forward'.
 
In the course of 2020, INSOL Europe submitted its contribution following the call for feedback in relation to the report of the High Level Forum on the Capital Market Union (June 2020), to the Consumer policy – the EU’s new ‘consumer agenda’ (October 2020) and to the EU roadmap on the new EU initiative entitled ‘Insolvency laws: increasing convergence of national laws to encourage cross-border investment’ (December 2020).
 
In 2021, INSOL Europe has continued making submissions to the European Union staff in relation to the new insolvency initiative by its contribution to the public consultation which ended on 26 March 2021 and by its participation to the European Commission Group of Experts on Restructuring and Insolvency law as an observer.
 
 
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