INTRODUCTION

The previous three chapters have been devoted to an in-depth analysis of the nature and limits of doctrinal pressures that are, or could prospectively be, exerted by EU law on national child relocation laws. It is now time to take a closer look at the more complex and more subtle contextual influence of EU law. As noted before, the EU is generally ‘not meant to constitute its own legal subjects’. Due to the limitation of its competence and the institutional constraints, EU law is even less meant to do so in family law that remains interested in substantively different phenomena. However, it would be difficult to dispute the fact that EU law or the CJEU's judgments do indeed contain accounts of who human beings are, what expectations they hold, and how this presupposes normative answers to their situations. As individuals ‘anxious to secure their place in situations of disaffiliation, multi-affiliation or vulnerability’ become ‘the custodian of specifically European interest’, EU decision-makers – and the CJEU in particular – are increasingly called upon to characterise these individuals through particular aspects of their social settings to grant them rights under EU law. From this perspective, multiple authors perceive the notions of autonomy and agency as dependent on the existence of a particular (here supranational) community, within which options become available to an individual and within which the individual can develop a reasonable perception of such agency