First Issue of 2013’s Revue Critique de Droit International Privé

The last issue of the Revue critique de droit international privé was just released. It contains four articles and several casenotes.

The first article is a survey of the Brussels I Recast (La refonte du Règlement Bruxelles I) by Arnaud Nuyts (Université Libre de Bruxelles).

In the second article, Urs Peter Gruber (Mainz University) discusses gay mariage from the perspective of German private international law (Le mariage homosexuel et le droit international privé). The English abstract reads:

In German civil law, homosexual couples are almost given the same rights as heterosexual couples. In 2001, Germany introduced a law on a registered partnership for same sex couples; it contains rules which in most fields are similar to the rules applicable to married heterosexual couples.

However, in private international law, Germany adopts a rather restrictive solution. In a first step, pursuant to a majority opinion, a homosexual marriage is governed by the law of the state where it was celebrated.; however, in a second step, it is held that the effect of such a marriage cannot exceed the effects of a registered partnership concluded under German law. This was, a homosexual marriage, which was effectively concluded abroad, is downgraded and converted into a registered partnership. 

It seems doubtful whether the German law is in conformity with EC law, especially the right to move and reside freely within the territory of the Member states guaranteed by Art. 21 of the TFUE. The author proposes to abolish the current German provision leading to the downgrading of homosexual marriages. Furthermore, he advocates the implementation of a real homosexual marriage in German law.

In the third article, Yasser Oman Amine discusses the international dimension of Egyptian copyright law (Le droit international privé du droit d’auteur en Egypte : à la croisée des chemins).

Finally, in the last article, Hans Jürgen Sonnenberger (Professor Emeritus, Munich University) discusses the democratic foundation of European rules of private international law of the field of company law (Etat de droit, construction européenne et droit des sociétés).