No apology is needed for the development by the common law of the anti-suit injunction, properly deployed, as a weapon to restrain a party in breach or threatened breach of his contractual obligation to arbitrate. In the context of the Brussels Convention and its successor, Council Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001, complex questions arise as to the compatibility of the anti-suit injunction with trust in the legal systems of other EU states, integral to the development of the Regulation. Provided that arbitration remains outside the scope of the Regulation, there remains much apparent attraction in the argument that no Regulation interest is affected by the grant of anti-suit injunctions to restrain the breach of an arbitration agreement—even where the target is domiciled in an EU state and the foreign proceedings have been commenced in an EU state. The United Kingdom has an interest in protecting the jurisdiction of arbitrations with a London seat. Should anti-suit injunctions to enforce agreements to arbitrate cease to be acceptable, then other remedies and approaches will need to be developed; the presumption that trust cannot break down does not address the practical difficulties which arise when it does. The topic presents an interesting example of the difficulties which can be encountered when merging common and civil law traditions in a single Convention.

Anti-suit injunctions have been the subject of lively controversy for many years, generating both litigation and academic debate. The area is of particular topical interest because of the recent decisions of the European Court of Justice (‘‘ECJ’’)1 in Turner v. Grovit 2 and Gasser v. MISAT .3 The specific focus here is on anti-suit injunctions granted to restrain a party from commencing or pursuing foreign proceedings in breach of an English arbitration clause. This article will not explore in any detail anti-suit injunctions granted to restrain vexatious or oppressive conduct or to restrain a party from acting in breach of a jurisdiction clause. That said, it is necessary to put the matter in its historical and analytical context and to have regard to these two important new decisions from the

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