I.  PRESENT ATTITUDE TOWARD ENFORCEMENT OF FOREIGN MONEY JUDGMENTS

A. Describe the receptiveness of your government (including courts) toward enforcement of foreign money judgments.

In Switzerland, all enforcement proceedings are governed by federal law. The legal basis is the unified Swiss Code of Civil Procedure (CCP).  The CCP provides that a decision related to the payment of money is enforced in accordance with the Debt Collection and Bankruptcy Code (DCBA).  While the procedural law is thus uniformly applied in Switzerland, the judicial organization is regulated by cantonal law.

The enforcement of a foreign money judgment is governed by international treaties, if any, and Swiss statutory law, in particular the Swiss Private International Law Act (PILA) as well as the statutes mentioned above. Switzerland is a signatory to a number of bilateral and multilateral treaties governing the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments. In practice, the most relevant multilateral treaty is the Convention on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgments in Civil and Commercial (hereinafter “Lugano Convention”).  The Lugano Convention is a multilateral treaty to which all countries of the European Union and Norway as well as Switzerland are signatories.  The Lugano Convention of 2011, which entered into force on 1 January 2011 and replaced the former Lugano Convention of 1988 is, in essence, the equivalent of the Brussels Regulation (Council Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001 of 22 December 2000) on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in civil and commercial matters. Furthermore, Switzerland is party to a number of bilateral treaties on recognition and enforcement in civil and commercial matters, in particular, with Germany, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Italy, the Principality of Liechtenstein, and Sweden