11 march 2016

“What will happen with my house if I get divorced and my partner is of different nationality from mine?”, “To which judicial body can I refer?”, are some of the questions to which the last proposal aims to give an answer to regulate the regulations in terms of property of international partners announced by the European Commission on last 2 March. The measure, which was submitted in the first instance in 2011, has been supported by 17 of the 28 member states, what represents the 67% of the population of the EU.

“The life of 16 million international couples can become even more complicated due to the onerous administrative proceedings and the unclear legal situations”, holds Vĕra Jourová, EU’s Commissioner for Justice. These regulations are destined to provide greater legal certainty to international couples in cases of divorce, separation and property distribution. Also, they will end the development of parallel and contradictory proceedings in the legislation applied by the member states.

Objectives

• Clarifying which is the relevant national judicial body;
• Determining which law is applicable in each case;
• Establishing the competence of each member state.

Nowadays, 16 million of international couples live in the European Union. From the new marriages that took place in 2011, the 13% was of international nature. The same happens with 41,000 out of the 211,000 common-law relationships registered in the EU this year. It is estimated that the cost of the legal expenses arising from the parallel proceedings amount to 1,1 million euros per year. With this measure, it is expected the EU to save 400 million euros in extraordinary costs.

This measure proposes enforcing the regulations in the case of divorce, separation and property distribution

Roadmap

The two regulations implementing the strengthened cooperation requires the adoption unanimously of the 17 member states that participate on it (Sweden, Belgium, Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Malta, Luxembourg, Germany, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Austria, Bulgaria and Finland). The remaining 11 states can take part in the strengthened cooperation at any time, such as it is indicated in the article 331 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union.

By its part, the countries that do not sign this agreement will continue applying their own national legislation in terms of private international law in the situations in which registered marriages and common-law relationships are involved.

On 16 March 2011, the European Commission passed the two first proposals of Regulations on property regimes of international couples, one for married couples and other for registered unmarried couples. On December 2015, unable of reaching the unanimity of the 28 member states, 17 countries requested to the Commission the authorisation of the strengthened cooperation among them. This kind of agreement allows a a minimum of nine countries for implementing the provisions if the 28 member states do not reach an agreement.