A. Introduction

On 15February 2007, the European Court of Justice delivered its judgment in the case Lechouritou and others v. the State of the Federal Republic of Germany. The case concerned the question whether compensation for acts perpetrated by armed forces in the course of warfare can be asserted on the basis of the jurisdictional rules provided for by the Brussels Convention. The Court held that such an action did not fall within the scope of the Convention since it could, due to its origin in sovereign acts, not be regarded as a civil matter in terms of Art.1 Brussels Convention. Thus, jurisdiction for claims directed at the compensation for damages resulting from the exercise of public power cannot be based on the Brussels Convention. The analysis of the Court’s ruling will proceed as follows: First, the history of the case as well as the essence of the judgment will be presented (infra B) before giving a review on the Court’s previous case law on the concept of “civil matters” (infra C). This outline will be followed by an analysis and a classification of the ruling in the Court’s jurisprudence (infra D), before eventually the results will be summarized (infra E).

B. The Facts of the Case and the Court’s Ruling

I. Background of the Case

The origin of the case dates back more than 60 years and touches upon a dark side of German history: on 13 December 1943 German soldiers carried out a massacre in Greece where 676 inhabitants of the municipality of Kalavrita were victims. Nearly 50 years later, in 1995, descendents of these victims brought an action based on the Brussels Convention, in particular Art.5 (3) and (4), in the Polimeles Protodikio Kalavriton (Court of First Instance, Kalavrita), claiming compensation for financial loss, non-material damage and mental anguish from the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1998, the...