The EU Adaptation of Important Chapter 11 Provisions

This article was first published on Global Restructuring Review in November 2023; for further in-depth analysis, please visit the GRR Americas Restructuring Review 2024.

For many years, Chapter 11 was both the model and the only successful restructuring option on the global level. This started to change when in 2019 the EU introduced the EU Restructuring Directive, requiring EU member states to introduce a pre-insolvency restructuring tool and mandating certain features it would need to have. The UK moved most quickly – at the time no longer required to do so given Brexit – to secure a competitive advantage. In June 2020, it enacted the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act 2020, which introduced the restructuring plan, closely modelled on the pre-existing UK scheme of arrangement but with important bells and whistles. Now, in 2023, most EU countries have adopted the Directive, and this article focusses in particular on the Netherlands, France, Germany and Spain. Three years on from the UK introduction, and two years since the Netherlands and Germany moved (slightly more recent for France and Spain), what are the lessons we can already learn and what does this likely mean for the future?

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