Moot Court Všehrd

Insolvency law governs the orderly resolution of situations in which a debtor — whether an individual, company, or in rare cases a sovereign entity — cannot meet financial obligations as they fall due. Modern insolvency regimes trace their lineage to medieval merchant practices and the early bankruptcy statutes of England (notably the Statute of Bankrupts of 1542) and continental commercial codes. Over time, two broad philosophies emerged: creditor-oriented liquidation regimes focused on maximising recovery, and debtor-oriented reorganisation regimes — exemplified by Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code (1978) — aimed at preserving going-concern value, employment, and economic stability. European systems have progressively converged toward restructuring-friendly models, particularly following the EU Insolvency Regulation (Regulation 1346/2000, recast as Regulation 2015/848) and the 2019 Restructuring and Insolvency Directive, which obliges Member States to provide preventive restructuring frameworks. The core legal disputes in contemporary insolvency law concern the balance between competing interests: secured versus unsecured creditors, the protection of employees and tort claimants, the treatment of shareholders under absolute priority rules, and the use of mechanisms such as debtor-in-possession financing, cram-down, and pre-packaged plans. Cross-border insolvency raises particularly difficult questions of jurisdiction, applicable law, and recognition of foreign proceedings. The UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency (1997), adopted in over 50 jurisdictions including the United States (Chapter 15) and the United Kingdom, attempts to coordinate parallel proceedings through the concept of the debtor's "centre of main interests" (COMI). Nonetheless, forum shopping — most visibly toward English schemes of arrangement, Dutch WHOA proceedings, and U.S. Chapter 11 — remains contentious. Today the field is shaped by the aftershocks of the COVID-19 pandemic, rising corporate leverage, energy-sector distress, and the collapse of high-profile groups (Wirecard, Evergrande, FTX, Steinhoff, Thomas Cook), each of which has tested cooperation between courts and the limits of recognition doctrines. Debates focus on the legitimacy of non-debtor third-party releases (questioned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Harrington v. Purdue Pharma, 2024), the rise of restructuring tourism within and beyond the EU, the treatment of crypto-asset insolvencies, and the still-unresolved problem of sovereign debt restructuring, where the absence of a binding international framework continues to produce protracted holdout litigation.