On Monday 4 June, in Luxembourg, European Ministers for Justice again examined the issue of recasting the Brussels II (a) regulation on decisions relating to marriage, parental responsibility and international child abduction (see EUROPE 11584).
Although they made progress on the circulation of provisional measures outside the lead member state responsible for parental responsibility in child abduction cases and the member state's consent on where the child should be placed (see EUROPE 12032), the concrete modalities for removing the exequatur, have still not obtained consensus.
The member states supported the European Commission proposal to demand consent for all child placements in host families or institutions in another member state, irrespective of the fact that the intervention of the public authority is required or not in this member state for national child placement cases.
The Commission explained that under the terms of the current regulation, several months could be required to decide whether consent is required in a specific case, which largely slows the process down.
Some member states, such as the Netherlands and even Ireland, however, indicated that they needed further clarification before deciding their definitive positions. A more thorough reflection would be required on the time frame to set be out for this kind of consent to ensure that this stage does not slow the process down even further, explained the Irish minister, Charles Flanagan.
France rejected the systematic requirement to obtain consent from the host member state where a child is placed on its territory and the French minister, Nicole Belloubet, said that “This automaticity would unnecessarily increase the period for processing requests”. She considers that a compromise solution may possibly be found in a request for systematic information with the obligation for the central authority of the host member state to indicate in their response whether authorisation is required or not for the placement in question.
Practical modalities for scrapping the exequatur have still not obtained consensus
The Bulgarian Presidency of the Council proposal to set up a single system for recognising and implementing decisions on parental responsibility, including the specific provisions on the so-called “priority” decisions, namely those taken in a given member state that should be recognised in another member state without any special procedure being necessary and without the possibility for opposing this recognition, did not, once again, manage to obtain unanimity.
Certain countries, however, proved more flexible than during the most recent debate (see EUROPE 11948) – particularly Sweden, Slovenia, the United Kingdom and even the Czech Republic which said that they were prepared to revise their respective positions on this point in view of obtaining a broader agreement.
Hungary and Latvia, however, were opposed to it because they believed that it would lead to the total exclusion of control by the implementing state. Poland considered that scrapping the exequatur would make these priority decisions superfluous.
Tsetska Tsacheva, the Bulgarian minister, said that, “The possibility of concluding this dossier in the short-term is getting slimmer. After two years of negotiations we should make all possible efforts to reach a political agreement that should be extended from now until the end of the year”. The Minister pointed out that in relation to this dossier it is the principle that “there is an agreement on nothing, as long as there is no agreement on everything” that is prevailing. (Original version in French by Marion Fontana)