«Lugar de prestación de los servicios» en las reclamaciones derivadas de contratos de transporte internacional de mercancías

Abstract

«Place of Provision of Services» in Claims Arising From Contracts for the International Carriage of Goods The rule of the place of provision of services of art. 7.1, letter b) of Regulation (EU) N.o 1215/2012 [art. 5.1, letter b) of its predecessor, Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001] was already interpreted in a broad way by the European Court of Justice in relation to the contracts for the carriage of passengers (Rehder case), considering that in this kind of contracts the aforementioned rule confers jurisdiction to both the courts of the place of origin and the courts of the place of destination, as it is in those places where the main provision of services by the carrier takes place. The same broad interpretation of the place of provision of services has recently been extended by the European Court of Justice in its Judgement of 11 July 2018 [Case C-88/17: Zurich Insurance plc y Metso Minerals Oy c. Abnormal Load Services (International) Ltd] to the contracts f o r t h e carriage of goods, by maintaining that the claims arising from these contracts may be brought, on the basis of the mentioned rule, and at the choice of the plaintiff, before both the courts of the place of dispatch and the courts of the place of delivery. This interpretation will be only applied to those claims arising from a contract of carriage of goods that is not subject to the rules of jurisdiction provided for in the uniform rules concerning the carriage of goods in force in the EU country where the proceedings are brought, and, moreover, only in those cases where the proceedings are brought against carriers domiciled in a EU Member State, Iceland, Norway or Switzerland. And at this point it should not be overlooked that the jurisdictional solutions applicable to claims that do not comply with the just mentioned conditions will not always coincide with the solution that, within the framework of Regulation (EU) N.o 1215/2012, the Court of Justice advocates.