Acceso usuarios
Rainer Hausmann
This article tackles general issues in European private international law, and namely issues of connecting factors, characterization and envoi, to portray, on the one band, how and in which direction this area of the law has emancipated from the domestic legal systems of the EU Member States and to illustrate, on the other hand, which are the underlying principles that encouraged and made this transformation possible. As far as connecting factors are concerned, the paper shows that the recent development in European private international law - as opposed to the solution in force in many Member States - is characterized by (i) an extension of party autonomy to family and succession law; (ii) a systematic substitution of nationality with habitual residence as the primary objective connecting factor in international family and succession law, and (iii) the promotion of lex fori as objective and subjective connecting factor, in particular in cross-border divorce and succession law. Therefore, the primary objective of the European legislation in the field of private international law is not to identify the closest factual connecting element of a case to the law of a certain country but, rather, to accelerate and improve the legal protection of European citizens and to reduce the costs in cross-border disputes by allowing parties and courts to opt for the lex fori and thus to avoid, to a large extent, the application of foreign law. Moreover, the paper illustrates that while the introduction of renvoi into European private international law by means of Article 34 of the Regulation on cross-border successions appears to be in conflict with the principle of unity of the succession, which is a main pillar of the Regulation itself, the practical importance of renvoi is limited, because renvoi is mainly restricted to cases where the deceased had his last habitual residence in a third State and left property in a Member State. As suggested in the paper, in order to avoid difficult problems of characterization when marriage ends by the death of one of the spouses, it would appear sensible to follow the example of Article 34 of the Succession Regulation in the forthcoming EU regulation on matrimonial property.
I. Introduzione. - II. I criteri di collegamento del diritto internazionale privato europeo. - 1. L'affermazione dell'autonomia privata. a) Ambito di applicazione. b) Valutazione. - 2. Il declino della cittadinanza a favore della residenza abituale. a) Evoluzione giuridica. b) Concretizzazione della residenza abituale da parte della Corte di giustizia europea. c) Valutazione. - 3. Il trattamento dei casi di doppia e plurima cittadinanza. a) Professio iuris. b) Criterio di collegamento oggettivo. - 4. Rafforzamento del criterio di collegamento della lex fori. a) Il principio de! «parallelismo» (Gleichlaufgrundsatz) nel diritto internazionale privato europeo. b) Valutazione. - 5. Clausole d'eccezione. a) Significato nel diritto internazionale privato europeo. b) Valutazione. - III. Qualificazione e interpretazione nel diritto internazionale privato europeo. - 1. Punti di riferimento nei regolamenti di Roma. - 2. L'influenza della Corte di giustizia. - IV. Universalità del diritto internazionale privato europeo e rinvio. - 1. La regola del rinvio nel regolamento sulle successioni. - 2. Valutazione. - 3. Ripercussioni sul futuro regolamento in materia di regime patrimoniale tra coniugi. - VI. Osservazioni finali.
