Like the General Convention, which expressly excludes bankruptcy, winding-up, arrangements, compositions and analogous proceedings from its own scope of application (Article 1, point 2 of the second paragraph), the draft Convention is also based on Article 220 of the EEC Treaty. A first version of the draft was prepared as long ago as 1970 and was forwarded to the governments of the Member States for their opinion. Since then three new Member States have acceeded to the Community. The Working Party was enlarged and work began again. The present draft is the result of these labours. The 'draft Bankruptcy Convention', as it is called, was transmitted to the President of the Council on 23 June 1980.
