Luxembourg, 09/06/2016 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday 9 June in Luxembourg, the eighteen member states participating in the enhanced cooperation initiative endorsed, without discussion, a political agreement on the two regulations applicable to the marriage regimes for international married couples and registered partnerships. These rules will involve the partners of two different nationalities or property shared by a couple of people of the same nationality in a member state other than the one in which they reside.
The rules approved seek to establish the appropriate jurisdiction and law applicable in the event of divorce or death. They are based on the fact that the people affected can choose the law applicable to them. They also clarify things for other situations and therefore set out the criteria by default. With regard to marriage regimes, the regulation stipulates that with no choice of law applicable forthcoming and in order to ensure clarity and "the imperative of legal security, with the need to take into account the life the couple", it would be necessary to establish conflict settlement rules through harmonised laws on the basis of the scale of connecting factors that help establish the law applicable to the couples' overall property.
The first joint and customary place of residence for the couples after their marriage should constitute the first criteria, prevailing over the law of common nationality of the married couple at the time of their marriage. If none of these criteria are fulfilled or if there is no joint customary place of residency in the event of the double nationality of the couple at the time of their wedding, a third criteria of the law of the state should be applied with which the couple have the closest ties.
For registered partnerships, the rules stipulate that if there is no choice of law applicable, the law applying to the patrimonial effects of the partnership registered is that of the state in which the law of the partnership was registered and are subsequently made formal.
The member states participating in the enhanced cooperation are Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Croatia, Italia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia, Finland and Sweden. Estonia has also announced its intention to take part in the cooperation after its adoption. The European Parliament is expected to give its opinion by the end of the month so that these two regulations can subsequently be formally adopted by the 18 countries taking part in this enhanced cooperation. (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic)