Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/1999-11-16-Speech-2-119"
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"en.19991116.7.2-119"2
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"Mr President, the submitted proposal on matrimonial and custody cases represents a clear improvement for the citizens of the European Union and is particularly welcomed by the PPE Group. For this, I would like to express my thanks to the Commission and the rapporteur.
The aims of the regulation are to ensure that judgements made in the Member States pertaining to divorce and other forms of separation are rapidly recognised by the other Member States, and also to provide up-to-date and uniform regulations governing parental responsibility for the joint offspring of spouses. This was made possible by means of the entry into force of the Amsterdam Treaty on 1 May this year, which as part of heading IV in Articles 61 and 65 makes judicial cooperation in civil cases a firm part of the EC Treaty.
The sought-after aims cannot be achieved by the Member States alone and must therefore be realised at Community level on account of their transnational nature. This will enable the creation of a European legal area finally granting European citizens throughout the entire EU a common feeling of legal security and guaranteeing them a standard of marital status that is the same across Europe. Problems arising in the European Union in the past with regard to marriages between people of different nationality have been due to the fact that documents attesting to marital status used in connection with marriage ceremonies were not recognised in the same way by all the Member States.
Questions regarding the competence of the courts and the validity of their judgements for spouses of different nationality who wanted to separate proved to be even more problematic. They revealed that one could not rely on judgements made at some point in the past and that judgements in custody cases frequently took no account of the children’s interests.
The purpose of the present regulation is to improve and accelerate within the internal market the free movement of judgements in matrimonial cases and in parental responsibility proceedings. The aim of the European Union is to create an area of freedom, security and justice in which the free movement of people is guaranteed and in which citizens of the Union can assert their rights with the same guarantees that they could obtain from the courts in their own country. The recognition of judgements in transnational family disputes should therefore be made easier by allowing the European Community to govern the recognition of divorce decrees passed by the competent courts.
In such a linguistically diverse legal area as the European Union, uncertainty and discrimination with regard to marriages between people of different nationality can also arise due to a lack of linguistic proficiency. We therefore support the call of the rapporteur
for the Member States to ensure that case records are drawn up in a language that both parties understand.
In addition to governing the jurisdiction and recognition of judgements on the dissolution of marriages, the regulation also covers the custody proceedings that in many cases accompany a divorce. This point requires particular emphasis, as it represents a significant addition to the protection of the children in question, whose interests must be guaranteed.
In the past, only a very small amount of progress has been made in creating a European Legal Area for the citizens’ benefit. Recognising divorce decrees and judgements regarding parental responsibility will solve the legal and administrative problems with which citizens are confronted on a daily basis. The entry into force of this regulation will fill a loophole that has existed in the field of international private law and represents an important step towards extending the Union into an area of freedom, security and justice."@en1
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