Article 36 of the Convention of 27 September 1968 on jurisdiction and the enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters, as amended by the Convention of 9 October 1978 on the accession of the Kingdom of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Convention of 25 October 1982 on the accession of the Republic of Greece and the Convention of 26 May 1989 on the accession of the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic, is to be interpreted as requiring due service of the decision authorising enforcement in accordance with the procedural rules of the Contracting State in which enforcement is sought, and therefore, in cases of failure of, or defective, service of the decision authorising enforcement, the mere fact that the party against whom enforcement is sought has notice of that decision is not sufficient to cause time to run for the purposes of the time-limit fixed in that article.

The term \`enforceable' in the first paragraph of Article 31 of the Convention of 27 September 1968 on Jurisdiction and the Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters, as amended by the Convention of 9 October 1978 on the Accession of the Kingdom of Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, by the Convention of 25 October 1982 on the Accession of the Hellenic Republic and by the Convention of 26 May 1989 on the Accession of the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic, is to be interpreted as referring solely to the enforceability, in formal terms, of foreign decisions and not to the circumstances in which such decisions may be executed in the State of origin. It is for the court of the State in which enforcement is sought, in appeal proceedings brought under Article 36 of the Brussels Convention, to determine, in accordance with its domestic law including the rules of private international law, the legal effects of a decision given in the State of origin in relation to a court-supervised liquidation.

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1\. "Civil matters" within the meaning of the first sentence of the first paragraph of Article 1 of the Convention cover an action for compensation for damage brought before a criminal court against a teacher in a State school who, during a school trip, caused injury to a pupil through a culpable and unlawful breach of his duties of supervision; this is so even where cover is provided under a social insurance scheme governed by public law.

2\. Article 37(2) of the Convention must be interpreted as precluding any appeal by interested third parties against a judgment given on an appeal under Article 36 of the Convention, even where the domestic law of the State in which enforcement is sought confers on such third parties a right of appeal.

3\. Non-recognition of a judgment for the reasons set out in Article 27(2) of the Convention is possible only where the defendant was in default of appearance in the original proceedings. Consequently, that provision may not be relied upon where the defendant appeared. A defendant is deemed to have appeared for the purposes of Article 27(2) of the Convention where, in connection with a claim for compensation joined to criminal proceedings, he answered at the trial, through counsel of his own choice, to the criminal charges but did not express a view on the civil claim, on which oral argument was also submitted in the presence of his counsel.

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A foreign judgment recognized under Article 26 must, in principle, have the same effects in the State where enforcement is sought as in the State where it was given. A foreign judgment whose enforcement was ordered under Article 31, and that remains enforceable in the State where it was given, must stop being enforced in the State where enforcement is sought when, under the law of that State, it ceases to be enforceable for reasons outside the scope of the Convention. A foreign judgment ordering a person to make maintenance payments to a spouse by virtue of conjugal support obligations is irreconcilable, within the meaning of Article 27(3), with a national judgment pronouncing the spouses' divorce. A party who did not appeal the enforcement order referred to in Article 36 cannot, at the execution stage, rely on a valid ground that could have been raised in that appeal. The courts of the State where enforcement is sought must apply that rule of their own motion. That rule does not apply when it would require the national court to make the effects of a national judgment outside the scope of the Convention conditional on its recognition in the State where the foreign judgment at issue was given.