At its Eighteenth Session (1996), the Hague Conference established a Special Commission to work on a preliminary draft Convention on Jurisdiction and the Recognition of Foreign Judgments in Civil and Commercial Matters.

The Special Commission was established at the Eighteenth Session of the Hague Conference "to prepare a preliminary draft Convention on international jurisdiction and the effects of foreign judgments for submission to the Nineteenth Diplomatic Session of the Conference to be convened in the year 2000" as an update to a 1971 agreement.

During the negotiations for the preliminary draft, members of the Hague Conference began to ask whether the future convention should take account of the characteristics and new legal problems of electronic commerce. In March 2000 an experts meeting examining the impact of e-commerce on the preliminary draft Convention concluded in part: "In view of the anticipated upsurge of electronic commerce in the immediate future, it would be unwise to exclude it from the substantive scope of the Convention." Aspects for the drafters to consider are also found in a paper that the Hague Conference commissioned, entitled, "The Impact of the Internet on the Judgments Project: Thoughts for the Future" (2002).