Peter Valach and Others v Waldviertler Sparkasse Bank AG and Others.
Date: 2017-12-20
24


In addition, the Court has held that Regulations No 1215/2012 and No 1346/2000 must be interpreted in such a way as to avoid any overlap between the rules of law that those instruments lay down and any legal vacuum. Accordingly, actions excluded under Article 1(2)(b) of Regulation No 1215/2012 from the application of that regulation because they come under ‘bankruptcy, proceedings relating to the winding-up of insolvent companies or other legal persons, judicial arrangements, compositions and analogous proceedings’ fall within the scope of Regulation No 1346/2000. Correspondingly, actions which fall outside the scope of Article 3(1) of Regulation No 1346/2000 fall within the scope of Regulation No 1215/2012 (see, to that effect, judgment of 9 November 2017, Tünkers France and Tünkers Maschinenbau, C‑641/16, EU:C:2017:847, paragraph 17).
25


As follows in particular from recital 10 of Regulation No 1215/2012, the intention of the EU legislature was to adopt a broad definition of the concept of ‘civil and commercial matters’ in Article 1(1) of that regulation and, consequently, to provide that the article should be broad in its scope. By contrast, the scope of Regulation No 1346/2000, as stated in recital 6 of that regulation, should not be given a broad interpretation (see, to that effect, judgment of 9 November 2017, Tünkers France and Tünkers Maschinenbau, C‑641/16, EU:C:2017:847, paragraph 18 and the case-law cited).
26


Applying those principles, the Court has held that only actions which derive directly from insolvency proceedings and are closely connected with them are excluded from the scope of Regulation No 1215/2012. Consequently, only those actions fall within the scope of Regulation No 1346/2000 (see, to that effect, judgment of 9 November 2017, Tünkers France and Tünkers Maschinenbau, C‑641/16, EU:C:2017:847, paragraph 19 and the case-law cited).
29


With regard to the first criterion, in order to determine whether an action derives directly from insolvency proceedings, the decisive factor applied by the Court to identify the area within which an action falls is not the procedural context of the action but its legal basis. According to that approach, it must be determined whether the right or obligation which forms the basis of the action has its source in the ordinary rules of civil and commercial law or in derogating rules specific to insolvency proceedings (judgment of 9 November 2017, Tünkers France and Tünkers Maschinenbau, C‑641/16, EU:C:2017:847, paragraph 22).
35


The action for liability at issue in the main proceedings is thus the direct and inseparable consequence of the performance by the committee of creditors, a statutory body established when insolvency proceedings are opened, of the task specifically assigned to them by the provisions of national law governing such procedures (see, by analogy, judgment of 2 July 2009, SCT Industri, C‑111/08, EU:C:2009:419, paragraph 28).
37


With regard to the second criterion mentioned in paragraph 27 above, it is settled case-law that it is the closeness of the link between a court action and the insolvency proceedings that is decisive for the purposes of deciding whether the exclusion in Article 1(2)(b) of Regulation No 1215/2012 is applicable (judgment of 9 November 2017, Tünkers France and Tünkers Maschinenbau, C‑641/16, EU:C:2017:847, paragraph 28).