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The fourth and final issue of the RabelsZ (The Rabel Journal of Comparative and International Private Law) for the year of 2025 has been published and is now available via open access and in print, featuring topics as diverse as Roman marriage and digital assets. The following titles and English abstracts of the articles have […]

[If you do use the blog for research, practice submission or database purposes, citation would be appreciated, to the blog as a whole and /or to specific blog posts. Many have suggested I should turn the blog into a paid for, subscription service however I have resisted doing so. Proper reference to how the blog is useful to its readers, will help keeping this so.]

Advocate-General Norkus’ approach in Case C-485/24 Locatrans Sarl v ES, which I reviewed here, focused on identifying a mutually agreed lex laboris and on the assistance the core DNA of the dispute, and the time that issue arose, may offer in identifying that mutual agreement.

The CJEU held last week. While it certainly may be said that the AG’s approach, in particular the reference to locus regit actum, is unorthodox and perhaps a touch convoluted, the CJEU’s approach is simply confusing as Ugljesa Grusic implies.

A reminder that the case formally concerns the Rome Convention, not the Rome Regulation however the provisions do not materially differ.

The novelty of the question in current case is the period of work to be taken into account in determining which law is applicable if the employee has worked for his or her employer in two separate stages: first, in several States and next, during the period preceding the end of the employment relationship, on a permanent basis in a single State, which parties clearly intend to be the new place of habitual performance.

The CJEU would seem to have sided with the French Government’s approach, that the most recent period of work could be taken into account in the use of the overall escape clause in Article 6, in order to determine, in the light of all of the relevant circumstances, the existence of closer connections with another country than that indicated by the other limbs of Article 6.

The CJEU as Ugljesa excellently summarises, holds that the change in habitual place of performance in its view makes the application of the ordinary test (identification of a habitual place of performance, which then leads to the lex causae) impossible; this then ordinarily triggers as a fall-back the law of the country of the engaging place of business.

However the Court then emphasises the core objective of the provisions on employment contracts: guaranteeing adequate protection for the employee, and the role of the escape clause in that respect: it must ensure that the law applied to the employment contract is the law of the country with which that contract is most closely connected (reference to CJEU Schlecker, [34]).

This then brings the last limb of Article 6(2) of the Rome Convention to the fore: where it is apparent from the circumstances as a whole that the contract of employment is more closely connected with another country, it is for the national court to disregard the connecting factors referred to in Article 6(2)(a) and (b) of the Rome Convention and to apply the law of that other country. The referring court is therefore invited seriously to consider the place where the employee has carried out his or her work on a permanent basis during the most recent period of the performance of his or her contract of employment, which place is intended to become a new habitual place of work, as the ‘proper law’ of the contract, for the Court holds, this is in line with the favor laboris objective. [61] the Court also suggests this assists with predictability however that, as Ugljesa also notes, would seem optimistic.

Like Ugljesa, I would suggest that the law of the intended new habitual place of work should apply as the objectively applicable law under Article 6(2)(a), rather than under the escape clause. This would serve party autonomy, predictability and favor laboris (seeing as the place is mutually agreed) more than the use of the escape clause, the position of which I feel is overpromoted with current judgment.

Geert.

EU Private International Law, 4th ed 2024, 3.39 ff.

Applicable law, cross-border employmentRome ConventionCJEU C‑485/24 Locatrans curia.europa.eu/juris/docume…Court does not seem to follow AG gavclaw.com/2025/09/09/l…CJEU zooms in difficulties of lex voluntatis, focuses on place of business through which employee was engagedMore soonish

— Geert Van Calster (@gavclaw.bsky.social) 2025-12-11T09:49:25.652Z

Barón Crespo / Parlement
Régime de pension complémentaire : les recours de 405 anciens députés européens ou de leurs ayants droit contre la réduction de moitié de leur pension complémentaire sont rejetés

On 19th December 2025, from 10-12 CET, the European Civil Justice Centre hosts a webinar on Data protection and collective actions from a US, European and cross-border perspective.

The fast-paced development of digital technologies, and the massive, cross-border, global dimension of the processing of personal data in the Internet, have necessitated the collective enforcement of data protection rights.

This seminar delves into developments in European collective actions, mass violations of data subjects’ rights, and the use of collective actions for the protection of supra-individual and homogeneous interests in Europe and the US, and aspects of cross-border litigation.

The focus of the seminar will the research conducted by Marina Federico (Naples University) for her book Protezione dei dati personali e tutela collettiva published in 2024.

Registration for free on Eventbrite here.

Program

10.00 Xandra Kramer (Erasmus University Rotterdam/European Civil Justice Centre) – Opening and welcome

10.05 Stefaan Voet (KU Leuven/ European Civil Justice Centre) – Introduction: Developments in European collective redress

10.25 Marina Federico (University of Naples “Parthenope”) – Data protection and collective actions. Itineraries of legal comparison in Europe and the United States

11.00 Eduardo Silva de Freitas (TMC Asser Institute/Erasmus University Rotterdam) – An Apple a day won’t keep litigation away: private international law’s new path for collective data protection claims

11.15 Discussion, moderated by Stefaan Voet

This post was written by Dr Franziska Arnold-Dwyer, Associate Professor of Law at University College London (UCL). On 24 November 2025, the Privy Council handed down judgment in Credit Suisse Life (Bermuda) Ltd v Ivanishvili [2025] UKPC 53 in an appeal from the Court of Appeal for Bermuda. By way of background, it is worth […]

The decision in case C-240/24, BNP Paribas Fortis, will be delivered on 18 December. After a Belgium bank refused to acknowledge the legitimation effect of a European Certificate of Succession issued in Poland, the issuing notary (the Notary in Krapkowice Justyna Gawlica – Krapkowice, Poland) started on its own motion proceedings to withdraw the certificate. […]

Henrike von Scheliha (Bucerius Law School) is currently looking to hire a Research Fellow (with the option to prepare a PhD thesis under her supervision) in German Family and/or Succession Law.

More information is available here.

The European Association of Private International Law calls for expressions of interest from its members to participate in a Working Group on the Jurisdiction Project of the Hague Conference on Private International Law. The immediate goal of the EAPIL Working Group would be to answer to the public consultation on the draft text developed by […]

Had someone asked me before 11 December 2025 to select three key principles underlying the application of Article 6 of the Rome Convention and Article 8 of the Rome I Regulation, dealing with the law applicable to individual employment contracts, I would probably have listed the following: Identical interpretation of the connecting factor of the […]

Leonard Maximilian Wagner is the author of Die internationalprivatrechtliche Qualifikation, a monograph on the issue fo characterisation, or qualification, as it arises in the context of conflict-of-laws rules, recently published by Mohr Siebeck in its Studien zum ausländischen und internationalen Privatrecht series. Since its discovery, the question of how to identify the relevant choice of […]

This post was written by Marco Pasqua (PhD, Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan). It is the final contribution to the EAPIL on-line symposium on the judgment of the Court of Justice in Cupriak-Trojan. The previous posts were written by Laima Vaige, Alina Tryfonidou, Elizabeth Perry and Anna Wysocka-Bar, and can be found […]

The third edition of the EAPIL Winter School will take place in Como between 2 and 6 February 2026. The upcoming edition’s general topic is Values in Private International Law. Day 1 will be about the protection of weaker contractual parties. The concerns surrounding torts will be dealt with in Day 2. Day 3, on […]

The second annual conference of the Australasian Association of Private International Law will be held from Friday 17 to Saturday 18 April at Ashurst’s offices in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, sponsored by Ashurst.

We are pleased to invite the submission of paper proposals for the conference on any aspect of private international law, broadly understood.  This includes issues of jurisdiction, choice of law, the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments (including how they relate to cross-border issues within a federation), and all areas of private law that raise cross-border and transnational issues.

Paper proposals should be made on this form by Friday 30 January 2026. We also welcome panel proposals. Please email m.keyes@griffith.edu.au if you have a proposal for a panel. Proposed presenters on any panel will be required to submit individual paper proposals.

We welcome anyone interested in private international law, including from the judiciary, legal practice, government, and the academy, from any jurisdiction.  Attendees, including presenters, will be required to pay a registration fee. A conference dinner will be held on the evening of Friday 17 April, at an additional cost.

To keep up to date with AAPrIL events, please connect with us on LinkedIn.

Il ne résulte pas de l’article 1844-7 du code civil que le transfert du siège social d’une société immatriculée en France dans un État étranger non-membre de l’Union européenne, ne disposant pas d’une législation nationale sur le transfert transfrontalier de siège avec maintien de la personnalité morale des entreprises et avec lequel aucune convention internationale n’a été conclue à cet égard avec l’État français, emporte de plein droit la disparition de sa personnalité morale et son remplacement par la société de droit étranger constituée selon les formalités applicables au sein de l’État étranger, ni la transmission universelle de son patrimoine vers cette dernière. Il s’en déduit que les juridictions françaises demeurent compétentes pour mettre la société (…) en liquidation judiciaire.

en lire plus

Locatrans
Convention de Rome du 19 juin 1980
Travail dans plusieurs pays : la Cour précise la détermination de la loi applicable en cas de changement du lieu de travail habituel

This post was written by Anna Wysocka-Bar (Jagiellonian University). It is the fourth contribution to the EAPIL on-line symposium on the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Cupriak-Trojan. The previous posts, by Laima Vaige, Alina Tryfonidou and Elizabeth Perry, can be found here, here and here, respectively. In this post I would […]

You are invited to the next Migration Talk organized by the Jean Monnet Chair in Legal Aspects of Migration Management in the European Union and in Türkiye by Leyla Kayac?k (Human Rights Expert/ Council of Europe Former Special Representative of the Secretary General on Migration and Refugees) on “Border Control & Migration: Safeguarding Fundamental Rights in the Age of Artificial Intelligence”.

Venue: Online via Zoom
Date: 17 December 2025, Wednesday
Time: 12:30 – 13:20 (UTC +3)
The Zoom link shall be provided upon request: migration@bilkent.edu.tr

Ryanair / Commission (TAP ; aide à la restructuration)
Aide d'État
Le recours de Ryanair contre la décision de la Commission approuvant une aide à la restructuration d’un montant de 2,55 milliards d’euros que le Portugal a accordée à TAP est rejeté

Intel Corporation / Commission
Concurrence
Marché des microprocesseurs : le Tribunal confirme la décision de 2023 de la Commission contre Intel mais réduit le montant de l'amende d’environ 140 millions d’euros

This post was written by Elizabeth Stuart Perry, Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor at Department of Law at Uppsala University and a Californian attorney. It is the third contribution to the EAPIL online symposium on the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Cupriak Trojan. The previous posts, by Laima Vaige and Alina […]