ELI Report Empowering European Families: Towards More Party Autonomy in European Family and Succession Law

Summary

This project reduces obstacles faced by international families in Europe and aims at facilitating free movement of citizens by developing an ELI Instrument with an information sheet and three toolkits for legal experts advising married couples, registered partners and couples in informal relationships. In particular, the project looked into rules on applicable law, jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement in family law as well as at succession law. It also seeks to promote the use of family mediation in this field.

Background

Empowering European Law Families is a research project led jointly by Katharina Boele-Woelki (Bucerius Law School and Utrecht University), Wendy Schrama (Utrecht University) and Christiane Wendehorst (University of Vienna). It is co-financed by an action grant under the Justice Programme of the European Union and conducted in cooperation with the European Law Institute (ELI) as well as with the support of the Council of the Notariats of the European Union (CNUE).

The project is inspired by the fact that there are currently 16 million international couples in the EU, ie couples where at least one of the partners lives in a country other than his or her country of origin. Despite the fact that EU legislation has achieved far-reaching unification of the rules concerning applicable law, jurisdiction, recognition and enforcement in family and succession law, international couples are still facing a number of problems. These problems have their roots in habitual residence as the dominant connecting factor, but also in the fact that existing EU conflict rules tend to encourage forum shopping and a ‘rush to court’. More notably still, there is often a patchwork of two or three forums and applicable laws even in standard cross-border divorce or separation cases and the approaches taken by the various laws involved are often incompatible with each other.

To a large extent, these problems could be avoided by way of early choice of court and applicable law under existing EU instruments and by agreements on substantive law issues, as far as these are enforceable in the forum State. However, experience shows that only a minor number of international couples make use of the options afforded to them under existing instruments.

Aim

This project aims at reducing obstacles faced by international families and at facilitating free movement of citizens by providing better certainty and predictability of results and reducing the costs of litigation in matters of family and succession law. It also aims at promoting the use of family mediation in the EU.