Views
Reports of HCCH Experts’ Groups on the Surrogacy/Parentage and the Tourism Projects available
The Permanent Bureau of the Hague Conference on Private International Law has made available two reports for the attention of its governance Council (i.e. the Council on General Affairs and Policy): the Report of the Experts’ Group on the Parentage / Surrogacy Project and the Report of the Experts’ Group on the Co-operation and Access to Justice for International Tourists.
The Group on Parentage/Surrogacy Project will need to meet one more time early next year to reach final Conclusions on future work. In particular, the Group discussed possible methods to ensure cross-border continuity of legal parentage both established by and in the absence of a judicial decision.
Importantly, “[t]he Group recalled that the absence of uniform PIL rules on legal parentage can lead to limping parentage across borders in a number of cases and can create significant problems for children and families. The Group further recalled that uniform PIL rules can assist States in resolving these conflicts and can introduce safeguards for the prevention of fraud involving public documents, while ensuring that the diverse substantive rules on legal parentage of States are respected. Any new instrument should aim to provide predictability, certainty and continuity of legal parentage in international situations for all persons involved, taking into account their fundamental rights, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and in particular the best interests of children. The Group agreed that any international instrument would need to be developed with a view to complementing the existing Hague Family Conventions and to attracting as many States as possible.”
Regarding the Group on the Tourism Project, it should be noted that it is currently exploring the need for an international instrument on the co-operation and provision of access to justice for international tourists. The Group concluded that “[t]he Experts’ Group recommends to the CGAP that it mandates the Experts’ Group to continue its work, with a view to assessing the need for, the nature (soft law and hard law options) and the key elements of, a possible new instrument. The composition of the Experts’ Group should remain open, and, if possible, also include representatives of Stakeholders, such as the UNWTO, as well as representatives of relevant organisations and private international law experts.” It was noted that the Consultant will finalise his draft (substantive) Report, which will be circulated at the end of this year.
The aide-mémoire of the Chair of the Tourism Project noted: “[i]f a new instrument were to be developed, the Experts identified a number of possible expected values such instrument might add. These included that tourists might be able to obtain appropriate information, including in a language they understand, to ascertain and understand their rights, and the potentially available options to seek redress. It might also provide co-operation mechanisms among suitable bodies that can work in a concerted manner to facilitate the resolution of complaints, with a view to guaranteeing access to justice in the broadest sense, including through alternative dispute resolution, in a non- discriminatory way. The instrument might also have a preventive effect. Finally, it might create an official record of the complaint, including for subsequent use abroad.”
In March 2019, the HCCH governance Council will determine whether work on these two subjects will go forward.
Forcing a Square Peg into a Round Hole – The Actio Pauliana and the Brussels Ia Regulation
Earlier today, the Court of Justice held that, under certain circumstances, special jurisdiction for an actio pauliana can be based on Art. 7(1) Brussels Ia (Case C-337/17 Feniks).
The actio pauliana is an instrument provided by the national laws of several EU member states that allows the creditor to challenge fraudulent acts by their debtor that have been committed to the creditor’s detriment. The ECJ already had several opportunities to decide on the availability of individual grounds of special jurisdiction for such an action, but has reliably denied their availability. In today’s decision however, the Court confirmed the availability of special jurisdiction for matters relating to contract, contrary to the proposition of AG Bobek (Opinion delivered on 21 June 2018). Read more
International commercial courts: should the EU be next? – EP study building competence in commercial law
By Erlis Themeli, Xandra Kramer, and Georgia Antonopoulou, Erasmus University Rotterdam (postdoc researcher, PI, and PhD candidate ERC project Building EU Civil Justice)
Previous posts on this blog have described the emerging international commercial and business courts in various Member States. While the primary aim is and should be improving the dispute resolution system for businesses, the establishment of these courts also points to the increase of competitive activities by certain Member States that try to attract international commercial litigation. Triggered by the need to facilitate business, prospects of financial gain, and more recently also by the supposed vacuum that Brexit will create, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Belgium in particular have been busy establishing outlets for international commercial litigants. One of the previous posts by the present authors dedicated to these developments asked who will be next to enter the competition game started by these countries. In another post, Giesela Rühl suggested that the EU could be the next. Read more
News
Conference & call for papers Sustaining Access to Justice
Save the date
On 19-20 October 2023 a conference on ‘Sustaining Access to Justice: Developments and Views on Costs and Funding’ will be held at Erasmus University Rotterdam. The conference is organised by the project team Affordable Access to Justice, financed by the Dutch Research Council. Confirmed keynote speakers include Rachael Mulheron (Queen Mary University London) and Andreas Stein (European Commission, DG Justice and Consumers, head of unit). More information on the program and registration will follow soon.
Call for papers
For this conference we invite submissions of abstracts from early career researchers and young practitioners.
The conference’s theme: Access to civil justice is of paramount importance for enforcing citizens’ rights. At the heart access to civil justice lies litigation funding and cost management. Yet, over the past decades, access to justice has been increasingly put under pressure due to retrenching governments, high costs of procedure, and inefficiency of courts and justice systems. Within this context, the funding of litigation in Europe seems to be shifting from public to private. Private actors and innovative business models emerged to provide new solutions to the old problem of financial barriers of access to justice. With the participation of policymakers, practitioners, academics and civil society representatives from all over Europe, the conference seeks to delve deeper into the financial implications of access to justice and the different ways to achieve sustainable civil justice systems in Europe. The topics addressed will include the different methods of financing dispute adjudication, particularly in the context of group litigation (third-party funding, crowdfunding, blockchain technologies), public interest litigation, developments in ADR/ODR, and the new business models of legal professionals.
Call for Papers: During the second day of the Conference (20 October) a panel will be organised which is intended to function as a forum for young scholars and young practitioners to present their work in front of a distinguished and broad audience. We particularly invite Early Career Researchers, PhD candidates (at an advanced stage of their PhD), and young practitioners to participate and present their research on the conference’s topics and beyond. While the contributions should fall within the Conference broader topic (costs and funding of civil justice), authors are free to include matters they deem interesting to explore within this context. Proposals can be theoretical, empirical as well as policy oriented. Interdisciplinary approaches and/or a Law & Economics approach are especially encouraged.
Submissions and deadline: Please submit an extended abstract (max 1000 words) in English to dori@law.eur.nl and cordina@law.eur.nl on 7 July 2023 at the latest. Please include your name, affiliation, and a link to your research profile. Submissions will be selected based on quality, originality, interdisciplinarity and the capacity to incite fruitful debates. Accepted submissions will be notified on 30 July 2023 at the latest. The selected participants will be asked to submit their final manuscript in early 2024.
The organisers aim to include the best papers in the conference proceedings, to be published as an edited volume with a reputable publisher. Further details in this regard will be communicated in due time.
Funding for travel and accommodation is available for the selected authors.
The conference venue will be @ Erasmus University Rotterdam – Woudestein Campus. The conference is organised by Erasmus School of Law in the context of the VICI Project ‘Affordable Access to Justice’. More information at: http://www.euciviljustice.eu/.
Online Panel on May 8: Fundamental Rights and PIL after the decision of the German Constitutional Court on the Act to Combat Child Marriages (in German)
On Monday, May 8, 2023, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute will host its 33th monthly virtual workshop Current Research in Private International Law at 3:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m. (CEST). Deviating from the usual format there will be an online panel on
Fundamental Rights and PIL after the decision of the German Constitutional Court on the Act to Combat Child Marriages*
The panelist are Henning Radtke (Judge at the Constitutional Court), Dagmar Coester-Waltjen (Professor emeritus for PIL at University of Göttingen), Susanne Gössl (Professor for PIL at University of Bonn) and Lars Viellechner (Professor for Constitutional Law at University of Bremen). The discussion discussion will be in German.
After opening statements from the panelists, the discussion will be opened to the audience. All are welcome. More information and sign-up here.
If you want to be invited to these events in the future, please write to veranstaltungen@mpipriv.de.
* Information on the decision here.
In Memoriam Oliver Remien
It is with great sadness that we have learned of the untimely passing of Oliver Remien, Professor at the University of Würzburg, Germany, on Monday, 24 April 2023.
Oliver Remien, born in 1957, wrote his doctoral and habilitation theses at the Hamburg Max Planck Institute, where he worked as an assistant to Ulrich Drobnig. He joined the University of Würzburg in 2001. An area of perpetual interest for him was the comparison of European private law(s), with a particular focus on the “Four Freedoms” of primary EU law, the growing impact of secondary EU law, and the practilities of the increasingly frequent application of foreign law in the domestic courts of the Member States.
Our thoughts are with his family.