Brexit and EU private international law

Abstract

Procedure of the British withdrawal from the European Union, officially launched on the 29th of March this year, opens not only questions of the general public-law governance but, first and foremost, gives rise to concern about its overall impact on the cross-border private-law transactions involving the UK and the rest-EU Member States. The article is focused on the regulatory risk within the framework of the Judicial Cooperation in Civil Matters (JCCM), encompassing the EU common private international law (PIL) provisions. Some misapprehensions about a possible continuity of the cooperation based on the existing PIL international treaties (e.g. the Lugano Conventions or the 1980 Rome Convention) on the one hand, and the deficiencies of the post-Amsterdam JCCM legislative mechanisms on the other hand, have been considered. The current European legislative policy dramatically lacks consistency even with regard to the EU countries which have not been vested with a special status comparable to the UK, Ireland, or Denmark. Thus the article suggests a possibility of restructuring the JCCM so as to encourage the UK to cooperate with the EU in the form of a ‘Continental PIL Partnership.’