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Luis de Lima Pinheiro (University of Lisbon) has posted Law Applicable to International AI Torts – A Note on a Forthcoming Contribution on SSRN. The abstract reads: This note summarizes the analysis, key insights and proposals advanced in the contribution “Law Applicable to International AI Torts: An Introduction”, forthcoming in Memorial Publication in Honour of Prof. […]

On 1 September 2026, the European Commission launched an open public consultation and a call for evidence as part of the formal review of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 (Brussels Ia Regulation). The initiative seeks feedback on the functioning of the Regulation and on possible targeted amendments to simplify, modernise and clarify the existing framework governing […]

Dans cet arrêt, la chambre criminelle apporte trois précisions relatives à l’exécution de mandats d’arrêt européens successifs. Elle affirme, d’abord, que l’ordre d’accomplissement des formalités préliminaires au débat devant la chambre de l’instruction, l’audition de la personne recherchée sur son consentement à la remise (C. pr. pén., art. 695-30) et le rapport du conseiller (C. pr. pén., art. 199), est indifférent, dès lors qu’ils précèdent les débats sur le fond. Elle considère, ensuite, que la communication d’informations relatives à la composition de la juridiction de condamnation constitue un élément nouveau suffisant pour justifier la réitération d’une demande de remise après un refus antérieur définitif, sans que l’autorité de la chose jugée ou le principe ne bis in idem y fasse obstacle. Elle juge, enfin, en reprenant la solution dégagée par la Cour de justice dans l’affaire Breian (CJUE 29 juill. 2024, aff. C-318/24), que l’absence de procès-verbal de prestation de serment d’un juge, ou la circonstance qu’un autre juge de la même formation n’ait prêté serment qu’en tant que procureur, ne caractérise pas une atteinte aux droits fondamentaux de nature à faire obstacle à l’exécution du mandat.

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In a decision of 27 August 2026, the Danish Supreme Court held that the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly (OSCE PA) could not invoke immunity from jurisdiction in proceedings brought by a dismissed employee. The Court found that the OSCE PA’s internal disciplinary procedure did not offer a reasonable alternative means […]

Le « Pacte européen sur la migration et l’asile » a en grande partie été mis en application le 12 juin 2026. Cet ensemble tentaculaire modifie profondément le droit de l’Union européenne applicable aux ressortissants des pays tiers et, par conséquent, le droit français des étrangers. Ce dossier a pour objet de mettre en lumière quelques-uns des mécanismes de ce Pacte.
Cette contribution analyse la dimension extérieure du Pacte européen sur la migration et l’asile qu’il consacre comme l’un des ressorts majeurs de la politique migratoire de l’Union, parachevant une évolution engagée de longue date. Cette consolidation normative demeure toutefois traversée de tensions. Tandis que l’externalisation soulève des interrogations persistantes quant à sa compatibilité avec les principes de l’ordre juridique européen, la réadmission reste tributaire d’équilibres géopolitiques que le Pacte ne parvient pas à maîtriser. L’ensemble interroge la capacité de l’Union à développer une gouvernance externe des migrations fidèle aux valeurs qu’elle revendique. 

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Si la jurisprudence européenne reconnaît traditionnellement aux États une large marge d’appréciation dans la définition du cadre et l’organisation du fonctionnement des commissions d’enquête parlementaires, cette latitude se trouve nécessairement restreinte lorsque celles-ci recourent à des mesures coercitives susceptibles d’affecter directement les droits garantis par la Convention européenne des droits de l’homme à des tiers. C’est ce que rappelle la grande chambre dans son arrêt du 7 juillet 2026 : une perquisition et des saisies ordonnées par une commission d’enquête parlementaire doivent être entourées de garanties adéquates et suffisantes contre les abus et l’arbitraire. Faute de telles garanties en l’espèce, la Cour conclut, par seize voix contre une, à la violation de l’article 8 de la Convention au titre du droit au respect du domicile.

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L’inapplicabilité de la directive 2005/36/CE (qualifications professionnelles) ne dispense pas les États membres de respecter les exigences de la liberté d’établissement. Lorsqu’un régime national subordonne l’accès à un avantage professionnel à un statut salarié, les autorités nationales doivent apprécier concrètement l’équivalence des conditions d’exercice acquises dans un autre État membre.

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La Cour de justice de l’Union européenne ouvre une brèche dans le système d’incitation des exploitants agricoles à la souscription d’assurance contre les risques climatiques en retenant qu’il ne peut leur être reproché de ne pas avoir souscrit une assurance inexistante sur le marché. Cette solution logique et pragmatique pourrait mettre à mal la politique actuelle de ventilation du risque climatique entre l’assurance privée et la solidarité nationale.

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Written by Nicolás Zambrana-Tévar LLM, PhD (KIMEP University)

Facts of the case

An unreported judgment of the Family, Childhood and Capacity Section of the Tribunal de Instancia de Alicante (No. 3), dated 29 April 2026, has attracted attention for ordering a Mexican gestational surrogate to pay child maintenance to the Spanish father for whom she carried a child, despite having no custody, no exercise of parental authority, and no contact rights (here and here).

A Spanish man, described in some reports as resident in Alicante province and in others as working in Switzerland, had a child through gestational surrogacy in Mexico using his own sperm and a donor egg; the surrogate has no genetic link to the child. The child was born on 24 April 2024 and travelled to Spain in January 2025, since when he has lived with the father. A separate, earlier 2024 judgment of the same Alicante court had already determined the father’s biological paternity and registered the child, under ordinary Spanish civil-registry rules, with the father’s and the surrogate’s surnames. In the April 2026 judgment, at the Prosecutor’s request and applying Arts. 154 and 158 of the Spanish Civil Code (CC), the court declined to strip the surrogate mother of parental responsibility (patria potestad) but suspended its exercise, gave the father sole custody, denied the mother contact and, because she remains the child’s legal mother, ordered her to pay €150/month plus half of extraordinary expenses.

Recent Spanish case law and practice on surrogacy

The Alicante case follows a line the Spanish Supreme Court has been building with similar facts. In STS 496/2025, of 25 March 2025 (ROJ: STS 1262/2025), the Court dealt with a case originating from a surrogacy arrangement in Tabasco, Mexico. The surrogate contributed no genetic material, and the contract expressly stated she was not the legal, biological or genetic mother and renounced patria potestad and custody in the father’s favour. The children were registered in Tabasco with the father’s two surnames, but the Spanish consular registration ultimately recorded the gestational carrier as mother. Years later the father sued in Spain to have her maternal filiation struck entirely and the surrogate mother herself supported his claim. The Spanish Court of Appeal (Audiencia Provincial) granted it; the Public Prosecutor appealed in cassation, and the Spanish Supreme Court reversed, reinstating her as legal mother. The Supreme Court applied Art. 10.2, Ley 14/2006 which expressly provides that the maternal filiation of children born through gestation by substitution is determined by childbirth. The Supreme Court treated this as a mandatory rule that could not be circumvented by agreement or by an action challenging the maternal filiation (Arts. 131, 139 CC). The court also rejected a request to refer the question to the CJEU because it considered that nothing in Arts. 19 and 20 TFEU was offended by it. The Court also cited its own earlier judgment, STS 1626/2024 of 4 December 2024, for the related but distinct proposition that a foreign judgment attributing parentage to intended parents cannot be recognised in Spain (exequatur) on the same public-policy grounds.

The current administrative framework is set out in the guidelines of the Spanish Ministry of Justice (DGSJFP Instruction of 28 April 2025). The Instruction expressly leaves without effect the earlier Instructions of 2010 and 2019. It provides that a foreign civil-status certificate, a declaration accompanied by medical evidence of birth, or even a foreign judicial decision determining parentage is not, by itself, a sufficient title for registration of a child born through surrogacy. Instead, filiation is to be established through the ordinary mechanisms recognised by Spanish law, including biological filiation and, where appropriate, subsequent adoption.

This doctrine is not merely a registration technicality; it holds even where both the father and the surrogate want the registration undone, which is a stronger statement than a case about recognition of a foreign judgment. Second, the Alicante court’s own earlier 2024 filiation ruling, and its 2026 refusal to go further than suspending (rather than terminating) parental responsibility, both sit squarely within this line: once the gestational carrier was treated as the child’s legal mother, the ordinary legal consequences of parenthood, including the duty to contribute to the child’s maintenance, followed. The Alicante court did not deprive her of parental responsibility; instead, it suspended its exercise, while assigning custody exclusively to the father and excluding contact.

Potential enforcement in Mexico

Whether Mexican law would recognise the same maternal relationship the Spanish courts are drawing consequences from is doubtful. STS 496/2025 illustrates the potential divergence particularly clearly: the contract stated that the gestational carrier was not the legal, juridical or biological mother, and the children were registered in Tabasco with the father’s two surnames, whereas the Spanish courts ultimately treated the gestational carrier as the legal mother under Spanish law. Mexican rules on surrogacy and parentage are state-specific, making it necessary to identify the law applicable to the particular arrangement before drawing conclusions about the status that Mexican law would attribute to the gestational carrier. On that view, the child in the Alicante case could be, simultaneously, solely his father’s child under Mexican law and jointly his and the surrogate’s under Spanish law. That divergence matters practically: a Mexican court asked to enforce the Spanish maintenance order might see the underlying “motherhood” it rests on as itself inconsistent with Mexican public policy, not merely as a foreign court applying stricter substantive rules.

Filiation is governed by Art. 9.4 CC, pointing primarily to the law of the child’s habitual residence at the time when filiation is established, with nationality only a fallback. Maintenance is governed, per Spain’s own conflicts rule (Art. 9.7 CC), by the 2007 Hague Protocol, whose Art. 3(1) points primarily to the creditor’s habitual residence and which, per its Art. 2, applies even where the resulting law is that of a non-Contracting State. The press record is unclear on the relevant facts: the father is described both as Alicante-based and as working in Switzerland, and the child reportedly holds a Swiss passport. A passport evidences nationality, not habitual residence, and nationality isn’t the operative factor for either rule, but if the family’s actual centre of life was split between Spain and Switzerland, that bears on which law governed the 2024 filiation ruling in particular, made before the child’s reported move to Spain.

If pursued in Mexico, recovery of the Spanish maintenance order would fall under the 1956 UN Convention on the Recovery Abroad of Maintenance (Mexico: party since 1992; Spain: since 1966), since the 2007 Hague Child Support Convention doesn’t bind Mexico and the 1989 Spain-Mexico bilateral convention expressly excludes maintenance from its scope. The Mexican authorities or courts would still have to apply the applicable Mexican rules governing recognition and enforcement, including any applicable public-policy limitations. However, the father has reportedly said he won’t pursue enforcement of the order. The EU proposal on parenthood recognition does not solve this problem either. The proposal is designed to govern recognition of parenthood established in one Member State by another Member State; it expressly leaves recognition of parenthood established in a third State to national law. Negotiations on the proposal remain ongoing. Thus, even if adopted in its present basic structure, it would not govern recognition in Spain or elsewhere of a parent-child relationship established in Mexico.

The human rights angle

The case sits at an angle to the ECtHR’s surrogacy jurisprudence. Mennesson v. France found a violation of Article 8 in respect of the children’s right to respect for private life because of the failure to recognise their legal relationship with their biological father, while finding no violation as to the parents’ own family-life claim; Paradiso and Campanelli v. Italy, on referral to the Grand Chamber, found no violation where the intended parents had no biological link to the child at all; Valdís Fjölnisdóttir and Others v. Iceland likewise found no violation in the non-recognition of a same-sex couple’s intended parenthood, given the practical continuity secured through foster care. All three cases concern the position of intended or genetic parents seeking recognition, not, as in the Alicante case, the position of a gestational carrier who is treated as a legal parent for purposes of imposing parental obligations while her exercise of parental responsibility and contact with the child have been suspended or excluded

The ECtHR’s 2019 Advisory Opinion concerning France (P16-2018-001]) further clarified that Article 8 does not require a State to register the details of a foreign birth certificate in order to recognise the legal relationship between a child born through gestational surrogacy and the intended mother. The Court held that another means of recognition, such as adoption, may satisfy the requirements of Article 8, provided that the procedure available under domestic law can be implemented promptly and effectively and in accordance with the child’s best interests. The Advisory Opinion therefore leaves States a choice as to the legal mechanism through which the relationship with the intended mother is recognised, rather than imposing direct registration as the only permissible solution.

The Alicante case raises a different question. Its human-rights significance lies not primarily in the refusal to recognise intended parenthood, but in the consequences of attributing legal motherhood to the gestational carrier. The Strasbourg case law does not appear to have addressed the precise question raised here: whether the attribution of legal motherhood to a gestational carrier may subsequently generate parental obligations, including maintenance, despite the absence of an intended parental relationship between that woman and the child.

 

On 15 September 2026, the European Association of Private International Law (EAPIL) submitted a position paper in response to the public consultation on the Draft UNIDROIT–ICC Principles and Model Clauses for International Investment Contracts. The paper was prepared by a working group formed by Olaf Meyer (University of Applied Sciences Frankfurt, Germany), Albert Henke (Università […]

Le « Pacte européen sur la migration et l’asile » a en grande partie été mis en application le 12 juin 2026. Cet ensemble tentaculaire modifie profondément le droit de l’Union européenne applicable aux ressortissants des pays tiers et, par conséquent, le droit français des étrangers. Ce dossier a pour objet de mettre en lumière quelques-uns des mécanismes de ce Pacte.
Cette contribution analyse la place de l’impératif de sécurité qui essaime dans le Pacte. En effet, soucieux de sauvegarder leur sécurité, les États membres font évoluer les règles substantielles et procédurales relatives à la demande d’asile des personnes considérées comme une menace pour la sécurité, nécessitant la modification de plusieurs dispositions du code de l’entrée et du séjour des étrangers et du droit d’asile. 

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The author of this post is  Javier Carrascosa González who is a Professor of Private International Law at the University of Murcia. A new book under the title “Libre circulación de personas y libre circulación de las familias: análisis de derecho internacional privado” (“Free movement of persons and free movement of families: analysis of private […]

Le « Pacte européen sur la migration et l’asile » a en grande partie été mis en application le 12 juin 2026. Cet ensemble tentaculaire modifie profondément le droit de l’Union européenne applicable aux ressortissants des pays tiers et, par conséquent, le droit français des étrangers. Ce dossier a pour objet de mettre en lumière quelques-uns des mécanismes de ce Pacte.

Cette contribution analyse le règlement (UE) 2024/1348 dit « procédure », entré en application le 12 juin 2026, qui révise en profondeur les contours de deux concepts centraux du régime d’asile commun : le pays d’origine sûr et le pays tiers sûr. Concrètement, ces concepts se voient européaniser par l’édiction de listes à l’échelle de l’Union, et les conditions de leur mise en œuvre sont assouplies. Ces modifications témoignent d’une volonté affichée de traiter plus efficacement les demandes d’asile, notamment celles réputées infondées, au détriment des garanties offertes aux demandeurs de protection. Elles auront d’importantes implications en droit français, dont les adaptations législatives sont encore attendues. 

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La double nationalité d’un époux, française et étrangère, ne fait pas obstacle à la caractérisation d’une nationalité commune étrangère des époux rendant applicable au régime matrimonial la loi de cet État en vertu de l’article 4, alinéa 2, point 3, de la Convention de La Haye du 14 mars 1978 sur la loi applicable aux régimes matrimoniaux.

Par ailleurs, est renvoyée à la Cour de justice de l’Union européenne la question préjudicielle suivante : « L’article 1er du règlement (UE) n° 1259/2010 du Conseil du 20 décembre 2010 mettant en œuvre une coopération renforcée dans le domaine de la loi applicable au divorce et à la séparation de corps doit-il être interprété en ce sens que la fixation de la date des effets du divorce entre les époux quant à leurs biens relève du champ d’application matériel de ce règlement, et donc de la loi applicable au divorce ? ».

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This post was written by Chrisoula M. Michailidou, Dr. jur. (Heidelberg), Working Group member for Greece in the EAPIL Working Group on Anti-SLAPP Directive Transpositions and Member of the Greek Drafting Committee. As already noted on this blog, the process of transposing Directive (EU) 2024/1069 – the Anti-SLAPP Directive – in Greece was under way […]

Directive (EU) 2024/1069 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on protecting persons who engage in public participation from manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings (‘Strategic lawsuits against public participation’) – the ‘Anti-SLAPP Directive’ – marks an important step in the development of a European framework against strategic lawsuits […]

Cette chronique de l’activité des comités est certes très récente, puisque nous n’en sommes qu’à son deuxième numéro, mais cela est suffisant pour constater des changements, à commencer par ce qui semble être un épuisement du stock des requêtes formulées contre la Russie. Sur le fond, si la question des conditions d’arrestation et de détention émerge sans surprise, des thématiques moins évidentes, comme la destitution des juges et procureurs, peuvent être signalées. Quant à la France, absente des constats de violation, elle occupe une place centrale dans les décisions d’irrecevabilité.

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Le « Pacte européen sur la migration et l’asile » a en grande partie été mis en application le 12 juin 2026. Cet ensemble tentaculaire modifie profondément le droit de l’Union européenne applicable aux ressortissants des pays tiers et, par conséquent, le droit français des étrangers. Ce dossier a pour objet de mettre en lumière quelques-uns des mécanismes de ce Pacte.

Parmi les outils du Pacte pour la migration et l’asile qui entre pleinement en application ces prochains jours, une innovation mérite l’attention. En vue de répondre aux difficultés que peuvent rencontrer les autorités d’un État membre confronté à une situation de « pression migratoire », le règlement (UE) 2024/1351 relatif à la gestion de l’asile et de la migration envisage de renforcer la solidarité entre les États membres à travers la création d’une « réserve annuelle de solidarité ». Ce nouvel outil se caractérise par son caractère à la fois flexible et obligatoire pour les autorités nationales. Il obéit à une organisation institutionnelle complexe dans laquelle les prérogatives décisives sont partagées entre la Commission européenne et le Conseil de l’Union.

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Youseph Farah (University of East Anglia) and Elisabetta Bergamini (Università degli Studi di Udine) edited the second edition of the Research Handbook on EU Private International Law. Published by Edward Elgar in its Research Handbooks in European Law series, the second edition of the Research Handbook addresses key questions and challenges in EU private international […]

The publisher’s blurb is as follows. Readers of the blog may use the discount code indicated below to get 20% off.

Conflicts of Worldviews and Private International Law

Sandrine Brachotte

 

This book develops a decolonial theory of European private international law. To do so, it begins with Western court cases involving what the author terms a ‘conflict of worldviews’: a clash between the legal frameworks governing the dispute and the worldviews of the formerly colonised parties involved, referred to here as ‘postcolonised worldviews’.

 

Through three case studies – respectively addressing religious arbitration, Indigenous sacred land, and sexual minorities in the Global South – the book demonstrates that courts routinely overlook these conflicts. As a result, the claims of formerly colonised parties are inadequately addressed. To remedy this structural discrimination within European private international law, the book proposes a pluralised theory of choice of court, foreign law, and international jurisdiction, more empowering of the postcolonised worldviews present in the case studies, and supportive of the emancipation of vulnerable identities among postcolonised people.

 

Sandrine Brachotte is an FWO Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, and a Guest Professor in Legal Theory at UCLouvain and UCLouvain Saint-Louis Bruxelles.

 

Sep 2026   |   9781509978533   |   416pp   |   Hbk   |    RRP: £100

Discount Price: £80

Order online at www.hartpublishing.co.uk  – use the code GLR BD8 to get 20% off!

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