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Ulla Liukkunen (University of Helsinki) has kindly shared the attached programme for the Second Seminar of the Global Network on Private International Law, Employment, and Labour Relations (GNPILE).

The event is open to all, but registration is required.

On Tuesday, October 6 2026, the Hamburg Max Planck Institute will host its monthly virtual workshop Current Research in Private International Law at 11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. (CEST).

Sandrine Brachotte (University of Antwerp) and María Julia Ochoa Jiménez (Comillas Pontifical University) will speak, in English, about the book

“Conflicts of Worldviews and Private International Law” (Hart Publishing, 2026).

This book brings together European private international law and decolonial thinking. It examines how European courts deal with conflicts between legal frameworks and postcolonised worldviews. Through three case studies—religious arbitration, Indigenous sacred land, and sexual minorities in the Global South—it shows that these conflicts are often overlooked. This results in the inadequate protection of the claims and identities of formerly colonised peoples. The book therefore proposes a more pluralist approach to jurisdiction, choice of court, and foreign law, giving greater weight to postcolonised worldviews. Prof. Ochoa Jiménez will comment on it, while focusing on private international law.

The presentation will be followed by open discussion. All are welcome. More information and sign-up here.

If you want to be invited to these events in the future, please write to veranstaltungen@mpipriv.de.

This post was written by Laima Vaigė, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Private International Law at Uppsala University. On 8 September 2026, the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) delivered its judgment in A.A. v the Netherlands (Application no. 7481/23), concerning a refusal of family reunification between a refugee father living in the Netherlands […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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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This post was written by Cayetana Santaolalla Montoya, Associate Professor of Private International Law, Public University of Navarra. The review of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 under Articles 140 and 142 is mostly being read as an exercise in supervisory calibration. Which services belong on the list, how asset-referenced tokens should be treated, where the perimeter of […]

This post was written by Cayetana Santaolalla Montoya, Associate Professor of Private International Law, Public University of Navarra The European Commission has opened a targeted consultation on the review of Regulation (EU) 2023/1114 on markets in crypto-assets, the review being mandated by Articles 140 and 142 of that Regulation. The deadline, which was extended, is […]

South Africa occupies a strategic position in African and Global South trade networks, yet its economy continues to lag behind its BRICS partners and many of its African peers. A recurring, if underexamined, contributor to this underperformance is the state of its private international law governing the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments (REFJ). The article, published in the Journal of African Law (2026), investigates why and how the principle of comity might help resolve this issue.

The empirical picture is striking. Of the reported South African REFJ cases collated for this study, roughly 44 per cent of foreign judgments brought for enforcement are refused. Contrary to what one might expect, the leading cause is rarely fraud or public policy. Instead, over half of all refusals (53 per cent) turn on a single, narrow ground: the rendering court’s lack of “international competence” under South African law. Under the framework laid down in Jones v Krok (1995), a foreign court is internationally competent only where the debtor was resident in, or voluntarily submitted to, that court’s jurisdiction. Every other basis for jurisdiction recognised elsewhere – the place of contractual performance, the place where harm occurred, or a valid choice-of-court agreement standing alone- is, on the weight of authority, insufficient.

The doctrinal puzzle at the heart of the article is comity’s curious position within this framework. South African courts have invoked comity rhetorically and sporadically for well over a century, from Acutt, Blaine & Co v Colonial Marine Assurance Co (1882) through to Richman v Ben-Tovim (2006) and Government of the Republic of Zimbabwe v Fick (2013). Yet in each instance, comity’s role has been exceptional, ad hoc, and ultimately subordinate to the ad personam residence-or-submission requirement. Even the closest thing to an operative use of comity: Duarte v Lissack (1973), where enforcement followed despite the absence of personal jurisdiction, was swiftly confined and effectively overruled. The result is a doctrine that is normatively invoked but structurally inert: comity as symbol, not substance.

The article argues that this need not remain the case. Drawing on the Canadian Supreme Court’s development of the “real and substantial connection” test (Club Resorts v Van Breda; Chevron Corp v Yaiguaje), it proposes a tailored adaptation for South Africa, allowing courts to recognise a foreign court’s competence where a genuine and substantial connection exists between the dispute and that forum, without collapsing into an unbounded “doing justice” inquiry that risks forum shopping, particularly in cross-border IP and e-commerce disputes. To guard against the corresponding risk of default judgments enforced against debtors with only tenuous links to the foreign forum, the article further proposes strengthening the natural justice defence, requiring proof of adequate notice and a proper evidentiary basis for the judgment, bringing South Africa closer to the approach already taken in India and other Commonwealth African jurisdictions.

Finally, the article situates this proposed judicial reform in relation to the possibility of treaty accession, considering what ratification of the 2005 Hague Choice of Court Convention and the 2019 Hague Judgments Convention would mean for South Africa’s REFJ regime, as the UK and Singapore have both illustrated in recent years.

The full article, including an appendix collating 39 reported South African REFJ decisions and their outcomes, is open access at the Journal of African Law: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0021855326101089

In May 2025, the Norwegian official report NOU 2025:6 proposed a comprehensive Cohabitation Act. The proposed Act (see NOU 2025:6, pp. 211–217) would regulate cohabitees’ financial relations during their relationship and upon separation, including co-ownership, division of assets and compensation. Following a public consultation completed in December 2025, the proposal remains under consideration. This post […]

As frequent readers of this blog and private international law afficionados will appreciate, conflict of laws can often seem like an entirely different creature in international arbitration. General rules of private international law are usually taken not to bind tribunals, and what legislators provide in their stead is often quite open-ended. Despite this, there is […]

The latest issue of the „Praxis des Internationalen Privat- und Verfahrensrechts“ (IPRax) features the following articles:

 

B. Steinrötter: The UNIDROIT Conflict-of-Laws Rule on the Law of Crypto-Assets. A contribution to the classification of Principle 5 of the UNIDROIT Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law

With Principle 5 of the DAPL, UNIDROIT has set out an early general conflict-of-laws rule for digital assets in relation to “proprietary issues”. However, the connecting factor cascade in Principle 5(1) of the DAPL primarily serves substantive-law interests. Neither choice of law nor objective connecting factors are typical of private international law: The lex causae cannot generally be determined by the parties to the transaction, but only by those who create crypto-assets or administer DLT systems, as the choice of law must be specified within the crypto-asset itself or within the system. Nor does the objective connecting factor first and foremost serve the closest connection. Overall, an international law of crypto-asset proprietary rights understood in this way could add a further dimension to the debate on the materialisation of private international law.

 

M.F. Müller-Berg: On the third-party effects of international jurisdiction in European civil procedure law

The third-party effects of international jurisdiction are only sporadically regulated in European civil procedure law. Against this backdrop, the ECJ has, over the past four decades, established rules governing such third-party effects in a multitude of judgments which cannot always be reconciled. These rules are, in principle, autonomous within the EU legal order, but cannot be applied without recourse to national substantive law, the scope of which, however, remains unclear in specific cases. Four recent judgments add to the existing picture: In the AirHelp case, the ECJ convincingly recognizes a procedural succession to the contractual forum in the event of assignment. Similarly, in the E.B. case, the Court recognizes procedural succession to the beneficial effect of a choice of court agreement in the event of assignment, but makes the procedural succession under EU law dependent not only on the substantive succession but also on the procedural succession under national law, which is itself subject to EU law restrictions. However convincing the decision may be in its outcome, its line of reasoning is equally unconvincing. The German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) arguably leaves open a procedural extension of the beneficial effect of a choice of court agreement in the event of accession to a debt, whilst the French Cour de Cassation convincingly affirms a procedural extension of the onerous effect of a choice of court agreement in case of a contract for the benefit of a third party. Taken as a whole, an increasingly uniform picture emerges. However, the recourse to national law in the E.B. case not only to substantive succession but also to procedural succession appears inconsistent.

 

M. Lieberknecht: Demarcating the Scopes of Art. 25 Brussels Regulation and National Law with Regard to the Substantive Validity of Jurisdiction Agreements

Regarding the substantive validity of jurisdiction agreements, Art. 25(1) Brussels I Regulation generally refers to the lex fori prorogati. However, the provision also provides an autonomous standard which governs certain questions of validity and, to that extent, supersedes national law. Given that the CJEU is only incrementally developing these pertinent (unwritten) standards, the precise scope of the ostensibly straightforward referral in Art. 25(1) Brussels I Regulation remains somewhat unclear. The Pome judgment further illustrates the CJEU’s understanding of how the domains of national and EU law are demarcated in this context. Specifically, the decision deals with a provision in the Estonian Code of Civil Procedure which limits the permissibility of jurisdiction agreements to disputes connected to the economic or professional activity of the parties. The CJEU held that such a provision is subordinate to the Art. 25 Brussels I Regulation and therefore has no bearing on the validity of a jurisdiction agreement that falls within the ambit of the Brussels regime – a conclusion that proves both correct and, in light of the Court’s recent obiter dictum in the Lastre case, all but inevitable.

 

W. Hau: The treatment of foreign decisions alleged to be contrary to EU law under EU recognition rules

It is not uncommon for a party seeking to prevent the recognition and enforcement of a foreign judgment to invoke public policy, claiming that the foreign court has infringed a provision of EU law. However, although it may seem paradoxical, the ECJ emphasises that it is precisely EU law that may prohibit the review of the compatibility of a decision from another Member State with EU law. The implications of this are discussed here using a case from the Higher Regional Court of Schleswig-Holstein, which confirmed the enforceability of a Belgian judgment in Germany under the Brussels I Regulation, even though the Belgian court may have disregarded provisions of European competition law.

 

D. Coester-Waltjen: The duty to hear the child – when is it indispensable?

The ECHR and the German Federal Constitutional Court (FCC) both concentrate on the question whether the failure to hear the child in child proceedings constitutes a violation of the European Human Rights Convention (EHRC) and the German Constitution, respectively. The courts arrive at different results: Whereas the German FCC holds that in this case the failure to hear the child is irrelevant, the ECHR stresses that the hearing of the child is the key issue of child proceedings and that courts must justify duly if they refrain from hearing the child.

The facts of both cases differ considerably as do the legal implications. However, it seems worthwhile to look closely at the reasoning of both decisions. Despite the different context, the question arises whether and to which extent the arguments of the ECHR might have implications also for those situations the German FCC had to deal with. Despite the multiplicity of proceedings in both cases and the variety of arguments brought forward the following lines will concentrate on child hearing exclusively.

 

M. Gebauer: German law of parenthood and Italian public policy

The Italian Court of Cassation has ruled that a German decision establishing the paternity of the deceased can be recognised, even if the heirs were not involved in the German proceedings. This is also in line with German law, whereas in Italian parenthood proceedings an application for a declaratory judgment following the death of the alleged parent must be made against the heirs because their legal position depends on the preliminary question of parenthood. These differences raise issues of public policy at the recognition stage, particularly when the right to a fair hearing is at stake. The Court of Cassation convincingly reasons that these differences are primarily due to substantive law and the interests deemed relevant by the respective legislator. The decision highlights the intra-European relevance of matters of parenthood on the one hand, but also the limits of unifying conflict of laws when it is not designed to overcome differences in parenthood legislation between Member States.

 

M. Stürner/I. Riva: Post-mortem paternity determination and Italian public policy

The Italian Court of Cassation has ruled that a German judgment establishing post-mortem paternity does not violate Italian public policy merely because the brother of the deceased (an Italian national), his wife and her son were not parties to the German proceedings. The decision is also based on the argument that the German judgment to be recognised originates from a highly reliable legal system, which serves as a point of reference for Italian civil procedure doctrine and is a key player in the European legal area; however, this rationale is hardly convincing in light of the postulate of the equivalence of legal systems.

 

S. Deuring: Choice of Law for Unjust Enrichment – regarding Cour de Cassation, Judgment of 26.11.2025 – Nr. 24-10.781

In the present case, the French Court of Cassation had to address a wide range of legal issues relating to the choice of law regarding unjust enrichment. The professional liability insurance of a German notary demanded repayment of the amount paid to the aggrieved bank, which is headquartered in France. Ultimately, the Court of Cassation concluded that German law on unjust enrichment should apply, a conclusion that is sound in substance but not in its reasoning. On more than one occasion, it had the opportunity to have the European Court of Justice clarify contentious questions of interpretation regarding Article 10 of the Rome II Regulation. Instead, the court developed its own guidelines with varying degrees of elaboration: In cases involving multiple parties, Article 10(1) of the Rome II Regulation providing for a primary connection to an existing relationship cannot be applied. The connecting rule of Article 10(3) of the Rome II Regulation refers to the law of the place where the enrichment occurred. Through the escape clause in Article 10(4) of the Rome II Regulation, the state with which the closest connection exists must be determined by weighing the overall circumstances. How the individual circumstances are to be weighed is left to the lower courts.

 

D. Tarikanov: Regulations governing various issues in the General and Special Parts of Private International Law under the PIL-Rulings of the Russian Supreme Court

This article analyses the Russian Supreme Court’s Regulation No. 24 of 9 July 2019, on the application of Private International Law. It examines the following issues: the legal nature of the Judicial Application Rulings in Russia; the triad of the foreign elements (the foreign subject, the foreign object, and the foreign juridical fact); the economic or legal connection of the domestic contract with the international contract as a foreign element; severance (dépeçage) of the contract statute and the personal statute in cases of absolute or relative invalidity of legal transactions for reasons relating to the person; the possibility of freedom of choice of law in international property law; and the transfer of title to movable property shifting from the sphere governed by the separation principle to that governed by the consensual principle.

In an earlier post on this blog, we presented Part 1 of Nadia Rusinova’s Practical Handbook on EU Family Law, highlighting its success in bringing clarity and structure to the complex framework of cross-border family law in the European Union.

The project has now been extended with the publication of Part 2: Litigating International Child Abduction Cases under the 1980 Hague Convention in the EU (2026, ISBN 978-619-93392-1-3). While Part 1 provides the conceptual and terminological foundations, Part 2 applies them to one of the most demanding areas of cross-border family law: international child abduction proceedings.

The new handbook may be viewed and downloaded free of charge.

Following the course of a return case

Rather than following the sequence of the 1980 Hague Convention, Part 2 mirrors the progression of an actual return case. It moves from identifying the applicable framework and establishing whether the Convention applies to the parties’ positions, exceptions to return, evidence, child participation, domestic violence and protective measures. It concludes with return decisions, appeals, enforcement and post-decision proceedings.

This structure enables practitioners to move directly from a concrete problem to the relevant principles and authorities.

Comparative case law at the centre of the analysis

The handbook contains 481 case notes drawn from national decisions in 23 jurisdictions: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. These are considered alongside judgments of the Court of Justice of the European Union and the European Court of Human Rights and encompass first-instance, appellate and supreme-court decisions.

This comparative approach reveals how recurring legal questions may produce different outcomes depending on the facts, available evidence and procedural context.

Issues capable of determining proceedings

Particular attention is devoted to issues that may prove decisive, including:

• custody rights and their exercise;
• consent, acquiescence and the child’s settlement;
• grave risk and intolerable situations;
• child objections and the right to be heard;
• burdens of proof and foreign-law evidence;
• domestic violence and protective measures;
• parallel parental-responsibility proceedings; and
• return orders, appeals, enforcement and the Brussels IIb overriding mechanism.

In her handbook, Nadia Rusinova examines throughout the interaction between the 1980 Hague Convention, Regulation (EU) 2019/1111 – Brussels IIb – and the 1996 Hague Child Protection Convention. Its treatment of child participation, domestic violence and protective measures is especially timely, reflecting the need to reconcile prompt return with an effective, evidence-based and child-centred assessment of risk.

A practical and accessible resource

The handbook is an essential resource for all professionals engaged in international child abduction and cross-border family law, including judges, lawyers, central authorities, court staff, researchers, trainers and translators. Wherever possible, the electronic edition provides direct links to the underlying decisions, enabling readers to examine their full factual context and judicial reasoning.

Part 2 complements Part 1 of the Practical Handbook on EU Family Law. The two volumes are designed to work together while remaining fully usable independently.

Further information is available on Nadia Rusinova’s EU Family Law Handbook webpage. Readers may also be interested in her related 2026 research project, Domestic Violence in Dutch Return Proceedings.