The Dutch Bankruptcy Act presently in force is exactly the same age as the house I live in, having been enacted in 1896. My house is not an extremely old one by Amsterdam standards: the neighbourhood in which it is situated is not in the oldest part of the city and was developed later than the area where the famous canals are to be found. However, 112 years is fairly old for a Bankruptcy Act, and there has therefore been an ongoing discussion for the last few decades on how the legislation might be renewed. In 2003, the government set up a committee which was given the task of drawing up a new Act. Last November, after four years of deliberations, the committee published its draft for a new Insolvency Act, Chapter 10 of which deals with international insolvency law and is the subject of this article.

Source: IBA edition SIRC