Conférence : "How European is European Private International Law?
Professor Francq took part in an international conference in Berlin (2 and 3 March 2018) trying to assess how far rules of conflict of laws and conflict of jurisdiction in the EU are driven by EU policies and necessities.
Over the course of the last decades the European legisla-ture has adopted a total of 18 Regulations in the area of private international law (including civil procedure). The resulting substantial degree of legislative unification has been described as the first true Europeanisation of private international law and even as a kind of “European Choice of Law Revolution”. However, until today it is largely unclear whether the far-reaching unification of the “law on the books” has turned private international law into a truly European ”law in action”: To what extent is European pri-vate international law actually based on uniform European rules common to all Member States rather than on state treaties or instruments of enhanced cooperation? Is the way academics and practitioners analyse and interpret Eu-ropean private international law really different from previ-ously existing domestic approaches to private international law? Or is the actual application and interpretation of Euro-pean private international law rather still influenced or even dominated by national legal traditions, leading to a re-fragmentation of a supposedly uniform body of law?
With this conference we aim to shed light on the present lack of “Europeanness“ of European private international law and to discuss how European private international law can become more truly European in the future.
Professor Marc Philipp Weller (Heidelberg) and Professor Francq before their panel.
Organization:
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Basedow, Max Planck Institute Hamburg
Prof. Dr. Jan von Hein, University of Freiburg
Prof. Dr. Eva-Maria Kieninger, University of Würzburg
Prof. Dr. Giesela Rühl, University of Jena