Case Law of the European Court of Human Rights on the Application of (Some of) the EU Family Regulations

Abstract

While the ECtHR is not a specialist court in the area of the EU family law regulations, some of its cases touch on the application of the EU family regulations and are authoritative as to the requirements of European human rights law in that field – as in innumerable others. The EU family law regulations concerned are the Maintenance Regulation (for a very limited number of decided cases) and the Brussels II and Brussels II bis Regulation, which has given rise to many cases involving international child abduction. In the latter field, there is a potential for a conflict between EU law and European human rights law. The article identifies the areas of friction, and the solutions that have been devised, with varying degrees of success, by EU and ECHR case law, to avoid a true conflict between the obligations of States under EU law and under the European law of human rights.