Nadia Rusinova’s Handbook on EU International Family Law
Nadia Rusinova has recently published an open access book titled Practical Handbook on EU Family Law. Part I: Key Concepts, Legal Terminology, and CJEU Case Law in Cross-Border Judicial Cooperation (2025).The Handbook can be downloaded from the Author’s website here.
The blurb reads as follows:
The EU Family Law Handbook is a unique, practitioner-focused resource, that offers a clear and structured explanation of the legal terminology and key concepts used in EU family law instruments. It is designed to support legal professionals dealing with cross-border family cases within the EU.
The Handbook focuses on: key legal concepts used in EU family law instruments, autonomous terminology and its interpretation by the CJEU, cross-instrument analysis (Brussels IIb, Rome III, the Maintenance Regulation, Hague Conventions) and practical tools including flowcharts, tables, CJEU excerpts, and QR links to primary sources.
Written in clear, accessible English, the handbook is ideal for lawyers, judges, court staff, legal translators, and anyone dealing with international family law in a multilingual EU context. Unlike traditional commentaries, this handbook is not article-by-article, but concept-by-concept, offering a more intuitive and applied approach for daily practice, training, or decision-making.
The Handbook began from something simple: a need to explain a word. Not just its dictionary meaning, but how it travels across borders, regulations, and decisions. What happens to a legal concept when it’s lifted from one national context and placed into another, spelled in English, and interpreted under EU law? Working in the field of cross-border family law, I’ve often found that legal uncertainty is not only procedural — it is linguistic. And yet, tools that help us work through this uncertainty are still scarce.
Created outside formal funding or commissions, this handbook is offered freely as a small contribution to our shared efforts in improving cross-border family justice. It reflects the everyday needs of those who apply EU family law in practice—judges, lawyers, court staff, and legal educators alike.