Ease of enforcement: The Dubai Courts and the Abu Dhabi Global Market Courts enter into a new MoU on the reciprocal enforcement of judgments

On 14 January 2025, the onshore Dubai Courts and the Abu Dhabi Global Markets (ADGM) Courts entered into a new Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) recording their agreement as to the reciprocal enforcement of judgments between their respective jurisdictions. This MoU comes almost seven years after the ADGM entered into an MoU with the UAE Ministry of Justice on reciprocal enforcement with the federal courts.

The latest MoU streamlines the procedure for obtaining the recognition and enforcement of judgments in the other jurisdiction. Under its terms, the Court which is asked to enforce the judgment may not re-examine the judgment on its merits and will be required to execute it so long as the procedure and formalities in the MoU are respected. For example, to enforce an ADGM judgment before the Dubai Courts, an 'executory formula' must be affixed on the judgment by the ADGM Courts, and the judgment must be translated to Arabic by a licensed legal translator.

Once that is done, a judgment creditor can either (i) submit an application directly to the enforcement division of the Court being asked to enforce it, or (ii) follow the deputisation process whereby the enforcement judge of the Court which issued the judgment deputises an enforcement judge of the other Court to enforce the judgment.  The deputisation process should be used where the enforcement Court needs to take enforcement action. Both of these approaches dispose of the interim step required under the previous regime of having to first refer the judgment to the onshore Abu Dhabi Courts.

While the title of the MoU suggests that it concerns the reciprocal enforcement of 'judgments', 'judgment' is broadly defined in the MoU such that it would include all final judgments, memoranda of composition (a document recording the settlement of a claim reached by the parties before or after commencement of proceedings and which has been approved or certified by Dubai Courts or ADGM Courts) and (importantly) arbitral awards ratified by the ADGM Courts or the Dubai Courts. Parties in arbitral proceedings seated in the ADGM will be particularly interested by this development as this MoU will allow them to benefit from a more straightforward enforcement process in Dubai. This is yet another step forward for the ADGM, which has invested significantly in recent years in its arbitration offering (see, for example, our blog post on the revamp of the arbitral centre, the arbitraAD, with its new set of rules).     

Whilst the MoU is non-binding, it is expected that both Courts will abide by its terms. Similar MoUs are already in place between various UAE national courts, and with certain foreign courts (e.g., between the Singapore Supreme Court and the ADGM Courts) on the reciprocal enforcement of judgments.