CROSS-BORDER CHILD RELOCATION: THE DYNAMICS OF EUROPEANISATION

Substantive family law is a firmly established and consistently defended competence of the Member States. And yet, in more and more cases family entitlements and EU citizenship rights intersect. This is demonstrated by the growing number of judgments in which the CJEU touches upon family matters, albeit often indirectly via the EU free movement and non-discrimination frameworks. Free movement is explicitly what might bring cross-border child relocation within the scope of EU law. It is, therefore, unsurprising that scholars and practitioners alike have expressed an interest in the legal obligations that EU law does or could impose on national child relocation laws. While EU legal actors have not yet acted in this field, the literature recognises that child relocation laws, with their potential effects on free movement, might prompt an interest of EU legislators in their harmonisation. EU law, due to its power to remove obstacles to free movement, is also potentially attractive to relocating parents involved in such disputes. Some are more welcoming of change that might be brought by EU law and others fear its potentially erosive effects. At the same time, EU citizens already cross borders in a world with the EU, where social reality and the legal frameworks of mobility necessarily intersect. National family laws are, therefore, increasingly faced with the need to accommodate the trans-border and multicultural features of transformations characterising modern family life, and child relocation law is no exception – with or without any EU intervention. However, not much is known about how national decision-makers currently approach EU law in child relocation cases, if at all.