CROSS-BORDER CHILD RELOCATION AND THE EU

This book is about laws on cross-border child relocation, understood as a long-term move to another country by a parent with his or her child. It is also about the European Union (EU), EU law, and what it means ‘to live with EU law’. And, bringing these themes together, it is about the influence of European law – both present and prospective – on national child relocation laws. As will be discussed, it is perhaps no longer a novel claim that EU law influences national family laws. EU law does so via legislative provisions on certain aspects of cross-border private relationships and by imposing obligations, as set out by the Luxembourg judges, to adjust national laws of EU Member States to free movement requirements. However, EU legal interventions rarely touch upon the core aspects of substantive family law, consistently considered to constitute a retained competence of EU Member States. While child relocation remains one of these core aspects, nowhere else do cross-border movement and substantive family law come together as clearly, prompting interest in the dynamics and effects of various EU influences in this understudied area of law.

The interest in the intersections of EU law and cross-border child relocation law emerges from three main observations.