92000E1905

WRITTEN QUESTION P-1905/00

by Michael Cashman (PSE) to the Commission

(6 June 2000)

Subject: Marriage contracts

Can the Commission confirm that marriage contracts validated and signed under one Member State's laws are not valid in the courts of another?

Can the Commission give the European Parliament an assurance that it will introduce steps to provide legal protection to citizens in such situations?

Answer given by Mr Vitorino on behalf of the Commission

(5 July 2000)

The Honourable Member has asked the Commission to confirm that marriage contracts validated and signed under the law of one Member State are not valid before the courts of another Member State.

The Commission would inform the Honourable Member that at the moment there are no Community rules applicable to marriage contracts and matrimonial property arrangements. The Brussels and Rome Conventions on Jurisdiction and the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations in Civil and Commercial Matters exclude matrimonial property arrangements from their scope. Similarly, the regulation on jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in matrimonial matters excludes marriage contracts and matrimonial property arrangements. However, the Commission communication proposing a scoreboard to review progress on the creation of an area of freedom, security and justice(1), provides for the drawing up by April 2004 of a preliminary study on jurisdiction and applicable law, for matrimonial property arrangements.

It follows then that the validity of marriage contracts concluded in another Member State is currently governed by the national rules, notably under private international law, of each Member State.

Moreover, the Commission would point out that there is a Convention on the Law Applicable to Matrimonial Property Regimes concluded under the aegis of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, but it has been ratified by only three Member States, France, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.

(1) COM(2000) 167 final.