Family Law

Ruth Lamont, Senior Lecturer in Familyand Child Law, University of Manchester

Keywords: Care proceedings – jurisdiction – EU – Brussels II Revised – public law – child protection

This article explores the use of the Brussels IIa Regulation in English care proceedings where the child is a national of another EU Member State. The structure and approach of the law on jurisdiction over care proceedings is explained to demonstrate that the Regulation is not well drafted to accommodate care proceedings. There are significant flaws in drafting and cooperation between national authorities in organising the transfer of jurisdiction between Member State courts. The underlying approach of the Regulation in assessing the child’s best interests against a background of mutual trust between national family laws does not provide a coherent basis for the law. Mutual trust prevents the assessment of potential future outcomes for the individual child from foreign care proceedings, limiting the scope of any best interests assessment as an aspect of the rules of jurisdiction.

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This article was published n in Child and Family Law Quarterly in Issue 1, Vol 28, 2016. The final published version of this article is available below under a CC-BY-NC licence.
2016_01_CFLQ_67.pdf