Cross-border enforcement

Enforcing a United States judgment in Germany

Applicable regime

Germany does not automatically enforce US judgments. No treaty binds the two countries. The US signed the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention but never ratified it, so it does not apply here. The route runs through a separate German lawsuit for a declaration of enforceability. Where an arbitration clause exists, it opens a stronger path through the New York Convention.

Applicable regime

The 2019 Hague Judgments Convention entered into force on 1 September 2023. Germany is bound to it through the EU's accession on 29 August 2022. The United States signed the convention on 2 March 2022 but has not ratified it. An unratified signature does not bind a state. Even between two contracting parties, the convention only reaches proceedings begun after it was in force between them. This pair meets none of that, since the US never became a party at all.

Without a treaty, a US judgment reaches Germany through domestic civil procedure. Recognition itself happens without a separate proceeding. Enforcement is different. To make a US judgment enforceable in Germany, the creditor files a suit for a declaration of enforceability under Section 328 of the German Code of Civil Procedure, decided by the Landgericht. Other routes into Germany, and the mirror question of outbound enforcement from the US, run on separate rules covered on their own pages.

What the destination court will check

A German court checks several things before declaring a foreign judgment enforceable, and under Section 328 these checks are cumulative. Any single failure blocks enforcement.

• The origin court had jurisdiction recognized under German conflict of laws standards, not merely under its own procedural rules.
• The defendant was served in a way, and with enough time, to mount a defense, judged by German standards rather than US default judgment practice.
• The judgment is final and binding in the United States, not still open to ordinary appeal.
• The judgment does not conflict with an earlier German judgment or an earlier foreign judgment already recognized in Germany.
• Recognition does not produce a result incompatible with German public policy.

The Landgericht rules on these grounds in the exequatur suit. It does not reopen the merits of the US case. This is one reason arbitration awards sit outside the pattern this firm tracks under non-enforcement as a refusal type.

What will not go through

Judgments that are not yet final under US law will not pass. Finality is a threshold the Landgericht checks before opening the file, not a formality.

Default judgments where the defendant did not get proper notice or enough time to respond, judged by German standards, face the same result. So does a judgment that conflicts with an earlier German judgment, or with an earlier foreign judgment already recognized in Germany.

Anything a German court reads as incompatible with German public policy also falls outside. That category is defined case by case, not from a fixed list a claimant can check in advance. Because no treaty covers this pair, none of these grounds is presumed in the creditor's favor. Each has to be argued and proven, a dynamic covered in more depth in the piece on where the burden sits once a judgment goes unpaid abroad.

Documents

Germany has been party to the 1961 Hague Apostille Convention since 13 February 1966, with a reservation and a notification on file. A US judgment, and the record supporting it, need an apostille from the competent US authority. Full consular legalization is not required for a country covered by that convention.

German court filings also need a German translation. The exact certification standard the receiving court expects for that translation is not something the verified registry settles for this pair, so confirm it with the court before filing rather than assume it. Germany's enforcement profile sets out the wider procedural picture for the destination side of this pair.

Timing

Once a German court declares the US judgment enforceable, the underlying right carries a thirty year limitation period. It runs from the date the judgment became legally binding. German law applies the same thirty year period to arbitral awards.

Filing the exequatur suit suspends that period while the Landgericht decides. A creditor who files does not lose ground to the clock during the proceeding. The exequatur suit itself carries a fixed court fee set under item 1510 of the German court fee schedule.

What the registry does not settle is how long the exequatur suit typically takes to move through the Landgericht. The general architecture for limitation periods across jurisdictions explains how these periods interact with treaty and non-treaty routes more broadly.

If the primary route is closed

Where the underlying contract carries an arbitration clause, that route runs independently of the judgment problem. The New York Convention 1958 gives an arbitral award a recognition and enforcement path in Germany that does not depend on any treaty between the US and Germany. Structurally, it is the more reliable of the two paths available here.

Where there is no arbitration clause and the US judgment stands alone, a conduit strategy sometimes exists: recognizing the judgment first in a jurisdiction with its own working link to Germany. Whether a statutory or treaty route exists for a specific chain of jurisdictions has to be checked pair by pair, not assumed from a general list.

None of this runs in reverse. Enforcing a German judgment in the US follows a different set of rules, covered on its own terms.

What to do before filing

Confirm the debtor actually holds assets in Germany that German enforcement law can reach, not a registered address or a passive subsidiary. If assets can move before the exequatur suit concludes, that risk needs mapping now.

Whether an interim measure is available to hold assets in place depends on the specifics of the case and has to be assessed on the file. A creditor with a weak service record, or a default judgment obtained without real notice to the debtor, should expect the debtor to raise exactly that in the exequatur suit. It is often the debtor's strongest card.

A structured review of the judgment, the service record, and the asset picture belongs before filing, closer to work covered under the cross-border recognition and enforcement service than to the filing itself. There is no fee tied to how the case turns out, and the entity handling it is listed in the public register referenced in the footer.