Business Rescue in Europe – On the way to European Restructuring Law

In September 2013, the Council of the European Insolvency Institute (ELI) approved the proposal for a project on the ‘Rescue of Business in Insolvency Law’ (‘Business Rescue Project’) and appointed Prof. em. Bob Wessels (Leiden, Netherlands) and Prof. Stephan Madaus (Halle-Wittenberg, Germany) as Project Reporters to lead this two-stage project. The first stage comprised the drafting of National Inventory and Normative reports by National Correspondents (NCs) from 13 EU countries. In addition, a report was prepared with an inventory report on international recommendations from standard-setting organisations, such as the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law (UNCITRAL), the World Bank, the American Bankruptcy Institute or the Nordic-Baltic Business Rescue Recommendations. Based primarily on these detailed reports, the second stage consisted in drafting an ELI Instrument on Business Rescue (‘ELI Business Rescue Report’) that establishes recommendations for a legal framework enabling the further development of coherent and functional rules for business rescue in Europe. After the Project Team finalised the draft Instrument in early 2017, ELI Fellows and Members of the ELI Council voted to approve the ‘ELI Business Rescue Report’ at the ELI General Assembly, representing ELI Members, and Annual Conference in Vienna (Austria) on 6 September 2017 with no objection. It consists of 115 recommendations detailed in more than 375 pages and Oxford University Press will publish it soon. In this article, the authors provide an overview on the background and content of their report.