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Abstract

This article outlines and critically examines the relationship between the qualifying declarations and the economic advantages of the Cape Town Convention on International Interests in Mobile Equipment. It shows that the qualifying declarations operate rather differently from how they are perceived in academic literature and practice. Specifically, the article shows that the critical advantage of the Convention and the qualifying declaration is the potential to reduce enforcement risk relating to different States in a specific transactional setting and not, as some observers might wrongly perceive, from the Cape Town Discount. Thus, if States are not prepared to make the qualifying declarations, this should not deter them from ratifying the Convention and the Protocol. States and society may benefit from adoption of the Convention and its related protocols with partial—or even without—adoption of the qualifying declarations, bearing in mind of course the interdependency of the Convention’s remedies.