Luxembourg, 19/04/2007 (Agence Europe) - On Thursday, EU justice ministers once again voiced conflicting views over the proposal for a regulation (the so-called “Rome III” regulation) on cross-border divorce. The aim of the Commission's proposal of 2006 is to simplify the legal framework of the matrimonial area within the EU (EUROPE 9234). At present, there are no Community provisions in the field of matrimonial law, so that, when one of the spouses is of a different nationality, or when the couple lives abroad, each member state decides according to its own rules under its national law on divorce. One of the innovations of the text proposed consists in giving people the possibility to choose the court and applicable law, in well-defined conditions. “With the Rome III Regulation, we hope to have courts in Europe that always apply the same law to a divorce - independently of the member state in which the couple files for divorce”, said Brigitte Zypries, Federal Minister for Justice and President-in-Office of the Council.
A majority of delegations unreservedly support the proposal for a regulation as, in their view, Community action based on Article 65 of the EU Treaty can put an end to the temptation to “shop around”, that is, to decide what legislation is the most favourable and to pick that one. The United Kingdom and Ireland have chosen not to take a stance on this question as they both enjoy an “opt out”. Three states (Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands) are sticking to their positions in so far as the proposal brings into question the legal tradition of these states which apply lex fori, that is, their own national law. Unlike most member states, Sweden and Spain consider the public order criterion is not sufficient to dismiss application on their territory of discriminatory legislation, mainly extra Community legislation. The regulation in fact provides for an EU court to be able, for example, to apply Islamic law (Charia) when the parties involved so request, on condition that this does not run counter to public order of the states that must enact on the request for divorce. There is another problem in the case of Malta where divorce does not legally exist. The Maltese authorities finally managed to have it agreed that none of their courts would be forced to pronounce a divorce between two foreigners living on Maltese territory under extra-national law. Furthermore, Poland has managed to have it acknowledged that the scope of the regulation be clearly defined so that a state is not obliged to recognise the existence on its territory of homosexual unions. Belgium, however, considers that these concessions granted to Malta and Poland run counter to uniform application of Community law throughout the Union, and consider that some citizens could find themselves in denial of justice.
In order to bring the situation out of deadlock, the German EU presidency proposed to the other member states that they continue to negotiate in working groups on the basis of guidelines on the various major points of the proposal. According to the Commission's statistics, there are around 170,000 matters of an “international nature” each year among the 875,000 cases of divorce in member states.
According to a diplomat, an “extremely tense” discussion was held on Wednesday evening during an informal dinner, and on Thursday morning, on the proposal for a framework decision that aims to improve the protection of the rights of suspects (EUROPE 9373). Six states (the United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus, Malta, Slovakia and the Czech Republic) are still fiercely opposed to the principle of harmonising procedural guarantees in the Union. “It is very disappointing. And yet it is on this text that we had pinned our hopes to show to what extent the EU was not just interested in security but also in the rights of citizens”, the diplomat concluded. (bc)