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Variation of orders under the maintenance regulation: a nod to substantive harmonisation?
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The below article appears in 2015 issue 3 of the International Family Law Journal at [2015] IFL 258 and has been made available free of charge as a service to our readers.
It is no secret that over the last 20 years the legislators of the EU have been pushing a process of harmonisation of European family law in areas of procedure jurisdiction and conflicts of law and recognition and enforcement of judgments. Whilst it is generally accepted that the EU has no competence under the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) to unify or harmonise substantive law in her explanatory report in relation to the Brussels II Regulation of 29 May 2000 (the first instrument that moved the EU into an area of law in which the Community had hitherto not played an active part) Dr Allegría Borrás said as follows:
‘European integration was mainly an economic affair to begin with and for that reason the legal instruments established were designed to serve an economic purpose. However the situation has changed fundamentally in recent times so that integration is now no longer purely...
Read the full article here.
