The European Agenda: An Overview of the Current Situation in the Field of Private International Law and Substantive Law

Professor Dr Katharina Boele-Woelki, University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. The author says that undeniably, the creation of a European family law regime is making progress. A distinction, however, has to be made between international and domestic family relations. Regarding the latter, the communitarian legislature is not trying to harmonise the respective rules because there is neither the political will nor any legislative competence for the EU to do this (see J Bateman, A Law Society View from Brussels: Perception and Reality [2006] IFL 35). The current development of a European family law, however, is not restricted only to cross-border relations. In addition to recent measures of the European legislature, there is a new independent academic initiative which is focused on carrying out in-depth comparative research into several family law issues in order to provide models for the harmonisation of substantive family law. The author intends to give a brief overview of both the international and European legislation, on the one hand, and the model providing activities that may be primarily useful for national legislatures, on the other. See September [2006] International Family Law 149.

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