The team of editors behind the EAPIL blog has just become larger.

Konrad Duden, a professor of civil law, private international law and comparative law at the University of Hamburg, and Caterina Benini, a post-doctoral researcher and adjunct professor at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, have joined the blog as permanent editors.

A warm welcome to both!

Meanwhile, after a six-year tenure, Pietro Franzina is stepping down as managing editor.

The new managing editor of the blog is Gilles Cuniberti.

On 15 January 2026, the Paris Court of Appeal ruled on an application to set aside an arbitral award on the ground of the alleged partiality of two of the members of the arbitral tribunal.

Background

The case was concerned with the alleged expropriation by the Federation of Russia of real properties belonging to a Ukrainian businessman after the invasion of Crimea in 2014. The Ukrainian businessman initiated arbitral proceedings against the Russian Federation on the basis of the Ukraine-Russia BIT after certain of his real properties were transferred to the Russian Federation in 2014.

The plaintiff appointed Professor Andreas Bucher as an arbitrator. As Russia would not appoint an arbitrator, the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) appointed Professot Raùl Emilio Vinuesa Alsina as second arbitrator, with the consent of Russia. The arbitrators appointed Professor Siegfried H. Elsing as president of the tribunal.

Russia challenged the appointment of Elsing before the arbitral tribunal, which rejected the challenge in March 2020.

In August 2022, the tribunal issued an award on jurisdiction whereby it rejected the challenges of Russia to its jurisdiction and ruled that it had jurisdiction. Russia initiated setting aside proceedings in French courts against the award in November 2022.

In October 2023, however, the appointment authority of the PCA allowed the challenge of both Bucher and Elsing, on grounds which the judgment of the Paris Court of appeal only alluded to, but did not fully present.

Meanwhile, in the French annulment proceedings, Russia had also challenged the impartiality of the same two arbitrators.

Commenting on the EAPIL Blog

Russia’s lawyers argued that Bucher had shown partiality by making a comment on this blog.

The post was entitled Children from Ukraine: New EU Information Page about Civil Judicial Cooperation and explained that the European Commission had launched a new page on the e-Justice Portal concerning children from Ukraine. The Commission stated that “Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine raises questions about the situation of refugee children who are displaced in the European Union from Ukraine” and identified the instruments which could be used to protect refugee children.

Professor Bucher commented:

Thank you so much for this most helpful information.
Is there any explanation why the 1954 Geneva Convention on refugees is not mentioned?

And that was it. Russia’s lawyers argued that this comment revealed Bucher’s bias against Russia.

The Court rejected the argument as follows:

The comment posted on the blog of the European Association of Private International Law (…) merely thanks the author of the publication for the information thus disseminated and asks him about the absence of reference to the Geneva Convention on Refugees, which constitutes the theme of the Commission’s declaration, without bias or clearly expressed opinion;

One wonders how the lawyers of Russia could think that such an argument could contribute in any way to the demonstration of the alleged partiality of Prof. Bucher and to the case of their client.

More generally, the abysmal weakness of the argument raises an interesting question of judicial culture. Did Russia’s lawyer not care even a little about their credibility? Did they not think that making such an argument could lead the court to not take seriously another better argument?

Russia’s lawyers put forward two other arguments. The first was that the University of Geneva (where Bucher long taught) had suspended its cooperation with Russian institutions. The Court ruled that as an academic, Bucher was autonomous from the University, and that he was not responsible for its opinions. The second argument was that Bucher had made comments in exchanges with the PCA after the award was made which allegedly showed animosity towards Russia. The Court ruled that in any case, comments made after the award was made did not reveal the state of mind of an arbitrator at the time when the award was made.

To Like or not to Like

The chair of the arbitral tribunal, Prof. Siegfried H. Elsing, was a partner at Orrick.

In March 2022, Orrick publicly stated that “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is reprehensible, and we join the international community in condemning it”, and that it would not undertake any new work for any entity related to Russia.

This statement had been the ground for the removal of Elsing by the PCA. The Paris Court agreed and ruled that, as this statement had taken place before the award was made, it was very relevant.

In addition, the Paris court noted that in February 2023, Elsing had ‘liked’ several tweets of a Ukrainian diplomat, or reporting on a conference of that diplomat, where Russia was criticised. The court further noted that the fact that these ‘likes’ were later on deleted showed that they were not entirely insignificant.

The Paris Court of Appeal set aside the award on jurisdiction.

How was the year 2025 for the EAPIL blog? Rather busy, to put it shortly!

Some 300 new posts were published over the last twelve months, covering a broad range of subjects. A little less than a third of them were concerned with rulings (including upcoming rulings, as in the case of Marta Requejo’s monthly post announcing the rulings on PIL-related issues in the calendar of the Court of Justice). Academic events accounted for around 60 posts, while 80 posts were on scholarly contributions (monographs, collective works, articles and journal issues). Most of the remaining posts were about activities of the European Association of Private International Law, such as the EAPIL Winter School, or the EAPIL Working Groups.

Many of the posts related to developments in case law were concerned with judgments rendered by the Court of Justice of the European Union.

The cases we have covered include: BSH Hausgeräte, on jurisdiction over cross-border patent infringement; Bulgarfrukt, on the service of an European Order for Payment; Matthäus Metzler, on payments to an insolvent debtor under the European Insolvency Regulation; Ławida, on the jurisdiction to receive declaration on waiver of succession; Anikovi, on the scope of the Brussels II ter Regulation and its relationship with conventions concluded by a Member State with a third country, Lindenbaumer, on the habitual residence of diplomats; Cabris Investments, on choice of court agreements (we had two posts on the Court’s ruling: here and here); RFC Seraing, on the review of arbitral awards against EU public policy (again, two posts: here and here); Locatrans, on the law applicable to employment contracts (with one post on the AG’s opinion and one on the ruling).

Some rulings of the Court of Justice benefited from a broader coverage as they formed the object of dedicated on-line symposia. The EAPIL hosted one such symposium on Cupriak-Trojan, on the recognition of same-sex marriages across Member States, and one on Apple Nederland Store, on jurisdiction over collective redress cases (speaking of symposia, we also had one on the English Law Commission’s Consultation Paper on digital assets / ETDs and private international law).

The blog also reported on domestic cases, namely from Austria, Denmark (see here and here, among other posts), England (on UniCredit Bank v RusChemAlliance, Hipgnosis SFH 1 v Manilow, Prähl v Lapinski, and others), France (see here, here and here, to name a few), Germany, Greece (here and here), Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Spain and Sweden. Rulings of the European Court of Human Rights and of the Unified Patent Court were also analysed.

Several of the posts published in 2025 were authored by guests. We’re particularly happy about the involvement of scholars and practitioners beyond the team of permanent editors. The blog aims to represent a broad variety of views and to increase the visibility of pertinent developments in all European countries, and guests have, of course, a crucial role to play in this regard.

We’re glad to name this year’s guests here, and express once again our gratitude to all of them: Franziska Arnold-Dwyer, Massimo Benedettelli, Yiannis Bazinas, Marco Buzzoni, Ottavia Cazzola, Stefano Dominelli, Artur Doržinkevič, Paul Eichmüller, Burkhard Hess, Nishat Hyder-Rahman, João Ilhão Moreira, Isabelle Jäger-Maillet, Antonio Leandro (here and here), Lydia Lundstedt, Aygun Mammadzada, Francesca Maoli, Fabien Marchadier, Lea Marion, Brooke Marshall, Heloise Meur, Sara Migliorini, Meltem Ece Oba, Sagi Peari, Michiel Poesen (here and here), Deplhine Porcheron, Andrés Rodríguez Benot, Rob Rooman, Pierfrancesco Rossi, Carlos Santaló Goris, Federica Sartori, Jorg Sladič, Elizabeth Stuart Perry, Koji Takahashi, Louise Ellen Teitz, Alina Tryfonidou, Laima Vaigė, Birgit van Houtert, Bryan Verheul, Burcu Yüksel Ripley.

The number of readers visiting the blog (and the Association’s website) was on the rise in 2025 (+9% compared with 2024). The level of interaction with readers also significantly increased: the number of comments to this year’s posts was 72% higher than last year’s.

The blog’s readership remains highly diversified, geography-wise. Italy, Germany and Spain are the top 3 countries by number of visits, followed by the United States, the United kingdom, the Netherlands and France. If the ranking is made by cities, rather than countries, Milan is on top, followed by Luxembourg and London.

The most read posts of the year are Gilles Cuniberti’s analysis of the ruling of the Court of Justice in Lastre, on Article 25 of the Brussels I bis Regulation, Pietro Franzina’s post on the Commission’s report on the Bussels I bis Regulation and the analysis by Ugljesa Grusic on the English Court of Appeal’s ruling in Limbu v. Dyson.

The posts that attracted most comments were Erik Sinander’s post one on the applicability of the Rome I Regulation to arbitral proceedings seated in the Member States of the Union. Gilles Cuniberti’s remarks on the judgment by the Court of Justice in RFC Seraing also prompted a considerable number of comments, and so did the guest post by Paul Eichmüller on the application of religious rules in arbitration of pecuniary claims and the recognition of the resulting awards in Austria.

Interactions were also numerous on LinkedIn, where the number of EAPIL followers rose by 17% compared with 2024.

The editors – Apostolos Anthimos, Gilles Cuniberti, Pietro Franzina, Ugljesa Grusic, Marion Ho-Dac, Matthias Lehmann, Alina Ontanu, Marco Pasqua, Marta Requejo Isidro, Erik Sinander and Anna Wysocka-Bar – wish to express their deep gratitude to the readers of the blog and the guests, and all those who helped us do a better job (often behind the scenes, including by drawing our attention on interesting developments, or on errors in our posts).

Readers are always welcome to get in touch with the managing editor (at blog@eapil.org), share their views on published posts through comments and submit original contributions for publications (please, take a moment to read our house rules if you plan to submit a text!).

Happy 2026 to all!

As customary, few posts will be published during the Winter break on the EAPIL blog.

We’ll be resuming our usual pace on 7 January 2026.

The editors of the blog wish readers and subscribers, and more generally all those in the EAPIL community, all the best for the Festive Season and the new year!

In the meanwhile, those willing to remain connected with private international law, albeit in a lighter mode, may want to take advantage of Erik Sinander’s recommended list of movies on stories with a private international law.

The EAPIL blog will be publishing fewer posts than usual in the course of August.

As in previous years, there will be no more than two or three posts per week until 25 August, when we plan to resume our usual pace.

Potential guests are encouraged to keep submitting their proposals at blog@eapil.org, in the meanwhile. The blog’s guidelines as regards submissions can be found here.

Enjoy the break!

It’s been another busy year for the EAPIL blog.

More than 300 new posts have been published over the past twelve months. Around 80 of them focused on cases brought before the Court of the Justice of the EU, the European Court of Human Rights and domestic judicial authorities. There were fewer posts on case law in previous years, but we realized readers are especially interested in judicial developments and tried to devote more energy on the latter.

While most posts were prepared by the blog’s permanent team of editors, we were especially happy to publish contributions written by no less than 25 guests. We never had so many! Warm thanks to all guests. And thanks in advance to those who plan to contribute in the future: new submissions are always welcome (information on how to contribute can be found here).

2024 was also a year of on-line symposia, i.e., series of posts on the same topic, written by different contributors and published in the space of a few days. The blog managed to host four such symposia in 2024 (we only had one or two per year in the previous years), namely on the rulings of the Court of Justice in Inkreal and Air Berlin, the ruling of the UK Supreme Court in UniCredit Bank and, recently, the book of Ekaterina Aristova, on Tort Litigation against Transnational Corporations: The Challenge of Jurisdiction in English Courts. A big thank you to Gilles Cuniberti and Ugljesa Grusic for organizing the symposia!

Interaction with readers through comments on individual posts was also intense, and always enriching. On average, one third of our posts formed the object of a comment in 2024. Anna Wysocka-Bar’s post on the Hantoch case (The CJEU on Subsidiary Jurisdiction in Succession Matters) and Erik Sinander’s post on The Court of Justice on the Subrogation of Forum Selection Clauses were among the most commented posts.

The most read posts of 2024 include Gilles Cuniberti’s French Supreme Court Retains Jurisdiction Over Paternity Claim against Alain Delon, Lydia Lundstedt’s Foreign Patent Disputes under the Brussels I bis Regulation: AG Emiliou’s Opinion,  Marion Ho-Dac’s The EU AI Act and Private International Law: A First Look, Matthias Lehmann’s A Conflict-of-Laws Rule for Companies at Last? – The CJEU in Edil Work 2, Horatia Muir Watt and Dominique Bureau’s Inkreal: Jurisdictional Barrier-crossing in Domestic Cases: A Threefold Critique, and Vincent Richard’s CJEU Rules on the Material Scope of the Brussels I bis Regulation, on the Mahá case.

We were delighted to witness, for the fourth year in a row, an increase in the number of visits, both through the website and through our LinkedIn page. We were also happy to learn that 100 more regular visitors decided to subscribe to the blog to be notified of new posts.

So, once again, huge thanks from the editors to the readers, the guests, the subscribers and all those following us on social media. And all the best for 2025!

All best wishes to the members of the European Association of Private International Law, the readers of (and subscribers to) the EAPIL Blog, the guest bloggers and all those involved in the Association’s events.

Relatively few posts will be published on the EAPIL blog in the coming days. We’ll resume our usual pace on 6 January 2025. Enjoy the Winter break!

As several among our readers (and editors!) are enjoying the summer break, the EAPIL blog will slow down its activity over the next few weeks. There will be just a couple of posts every week until the end of August, when the usual five-post-a-week pace will resume.

Have a great summer!

As announced on this blog a few days ago, the website of the European Association of Private International Law has a new look and some new contents.

Take a tour of the new website and learn about who we are, what we do, and how members can contribute to the Association’s goals, including by launching new activities, such as the establishment of Working Groups.

Those interested in joining EAPIL will find more on how to apply for membership here.

Potential and current members willing to know more about the community of scholars and practitioners that EAPIL represents may want to look at some statistical data.

Between 11 and 12 March 2024, existing members will be receiving an e-mail with the credentials to access MyEAPIL, the member’s reserved area. Within MyEAPIL, members will be able to update their personal information and browse the members’ database.

The EAPIL blog, too, has been redesigned. Old posts remain available (their URL is unchanged), and new ones will come out as usual.

An EAPIL blog archive has been created to facilitate access to the on-line symposia that the blog has been hosting over the years. The archive will be further expanded in the future to include a broader selection of “views and comments” posts, as these may be of interest to readers months or years after their publication.

The visitors of the website and the readers of the blog are encouraged to share their views on the new website, and help us spot the issues that remain to be addressed: the transition from an old website to a new one is a relatively complex process, and we’re aware that a few corrections are needed, here and there. For this, just add a comment to this post or send an e-mail to Pietro Franzina at pietro.franzina@unicatt.it.

Many thanks, and feel welcome to the Association’s new virtual home!

The website you’re visiting has been on-line since December 2019. It has undergone only minor changes since.

The time has come to offer readers some new features and a new design.

Between 7 and 10 March 2024 a newly designed website will replace the existing one. Information on the European Association of Private International Law and its activities will prove easier to retrieve, and members will benefit from improved opportunities for exchange and cooperation.

One notable innovation of the new website consists in the creation of a reserved area for the members of the Association (“MyEAPIL”). Through MyEAPIL, members will be able to update their profile and browse the members’ database. They will also be able to check whether the Association has received their fees (by the way, fellow members, if you haven’t paid your fees for 2024, please take a moment to do so as soon as practical: just fill in this form).

EAPIL members will be receiving their login credentials on 11 March 2024 by e-mail (the sender’s address is noreply@eapilapp.org).

The redesign of the new website will also offer an opportunity to fix some technical issues. We’re aware that some of those who have subscribed to be notified of the publication of new posts on the EAPIL blog have not been receiving such notifications recently. Sincere apologies to those affected. We’re working on the problem and trust it’ll disappear once the new website is on-line.

In order to facilitate the transition towards the new website, the EAPIL blog will take a break for a couple of days. No new posts will be published on 7 and 8 March. Posting will resume with the usual pace on 11 March 2024.

The contents of the website will remain accessible at all times during this passage. The display of some pages, however, may occasionally be problematic in the meanwhile. Many thanks in advance for your understanding.

In case of doubts, feel free to get in touch with us at blog@eapil.org.

Curious about how the new website will look like? Please find below the screenshots of the new home page and some other pages.



The blog of the European Association of Private International Law has hosted some 300 posts in the course of 2023: 79 of them reported on (and analysed) recent case law, while 64 informed about (and discussed) recent normative developments, at the domestic, European and international level (in 2022, the blog published 75 posts on case law and 38 posts on legislative developments).

Several posts were published to inform the members of the Association, and more generally the blog readers, about the activities of the Association (such as the position papers adopted by the working groups created to discuss the 1980 Child Abduction and the 1996 Child Protection Conventions, and the UNIDROIT draft principles on digital assets) and the Association’s events, including those planned to take place in 2024, including the EAPIL Winter School in Como and the EAPIL Conference in Wroclaw.

More than 60 posts were written by guests, which marks a slight increase compared with 2022. The editors are eager to receive more. So, please, potential guests, don’t hesitate to share with us your submissions! Just write an e-mail to blog@eapil.org.

The number of visitors has increased (+7%), and so has the number of subscribers: there are now more than 700 users who are regularly notified by e-mail of new posts. Our LinkedIn page, where the blog posts are re-published, has also attracted an increased number of “impressions”.

The most read posts, among those published in 2023, include Martina Mantovani’s Private International Law and Climate Change: the “Four Islanders of Pari” Case, Pietro Franzina’s Italian Authorities Claim Jurisdiction to Protect Indi Gregory After English High Court Ruled Life Support Should Be Withdrawn, and Matthias Lehmann’s UNIDROIT Principles on Digital Assets and Private Law Adopted.

Blog readers come from all over the world, with Europe, unsurprisingly, being the continent from which the majority of readers are established. Specifically, Italy, Germany, Spain, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, France and Belgium are at the top of the list. The United States is the non-European country where most of the blog readers are based.

Globally, the posts published in 2023 attracted 115 comments. The most commented posts include Erik Sinander’s Qatari State Immunity for Employment Court Procedure in Sweden, Gilles Cuniberti’s London Steamship: English Court Declines to Follow Ultra Vires CJEU Judgment, Matthias Lehmann’s Club La Costa (Part 1): Group-of-Companies Doctrine and Proof of Corporate Domicile under Brussels I bis, and Ugljesa Grusic’s Are English Courts Becoming the World’s Arbitral Policeman?

Many thanks, on behalf of the editorial team of the EAPIL blog, to all those who read our posts (and react to them with comments), those who draw our attention to recent developments and upcoming events, and those who contribute to our work as guests!

And all the best for the New Year!

The editorial team of the EAPIL blog has just become a bit larger! Ugljesa Grusic, an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Laws of UCL, has kindly accepted to join our invitation: thanks a lot, Ugljesa, and welcome!

Please check out Ugljesa’s first post here.

It’s a rather special first post, as it announces an on-line symposium, edited by Ugljesa himself, that will run from Monday to Wednesday next week, on the law applicable to arbitration agreements in light of the recent proposals of the English Law Commission.

As it is usual at this time of the year, the EAPIL blog will slightly slow down its activity for a few weeks.

We’ll provide news on scholarship, recent case law and on-going legislative work every week, but we’ll limit ourselves to two or three post a week.

The usual five-post-a-week pace will resume at the beginning of September.

Enjoy your Summer, readers!

How did things go with the EAPIL blog in 2022? The following statistics provide some answers.

About 315 posts have been published over the last twelve months. More than 80 of these consisted of reports of, or comments on, court rulings (we mostly covered rulings by the Court of Justice of the European Union, but we also dealt with rulings given by the European Court of Human Rights and by domestic courts). Some 40 posts were about new or contemplated normative texts. The remaining posts mostly concerned new scholarly works or upcoming academic events.

No less than 40 posts were authored by guests, rather than the blog’s permanent editors. The EAPIL blog aims to foster dialogue among anybody interested in private international law, so new inputs are always welcome! For inquiries and submissions, please write an e-mail to blog@eapil.org or to pietro.franzina@unicatt.it.

The aggregate number of visits and “unique visitors” has increased, compared with last year (+2,8% and +19%, respectively). Interaction with readers remained intense in 2022, as attested by the comments that the blog’s posts attracted (120 in total). The number of subscribers, i.e., those who asked to be notified of new posts, raised to 600, i.e., about 170 more than one year ago.

Our Twitter account and LinkedIn profile also witnessed an increase in interactions.

The three most read posts, among those published in 2022, were Jurisdictional Immunities: Germany v. Italy, Again, on the proceedings instituted by Germany against Italy before the International Court of Justice in April;  Humpty-Dumpty, Arbitration, and the Brussels Regulation: A View from Oxford, by Adrian Briggs, concerning the ruling of the Court of Justice in the case of London Steam-Ship Owners’ Mutual Assistance Association Ltd v Spain; and Marco Buzzoni’s CJEU Adds a New Piece to the ‘Mosaic’ in Gtflix Tv.

The posts that attracted the highest number of written comments were Martina Mantovani’s Notaries and EU PIL: Taking Stock of 5 Years of Case Law, Felix Wilke’s The Silent Death of Conflict-of-Law Provisions in EU Directives?, and Erik Sinander’s Danish Supreme Court: No Tort Liability under Danish Law for Green Desert Operation in Iraq.

Many thanks to all readers, guests and commenters for feeding the exchanges.

2023 will be a year of innovations regarding the blog – and, generally, the website – of the European Association of Private International Law (various improvements are currently being studied, and will be announced in due course). The support of the blog’s community will be more important than ever!

With all best wishes for the New Year from the editors!

The EAPIL blog goes on “Winter Break mode”, meaning that only few posts will be published over the next few days. But stay tuned: blogging will resume as usual on 9 January 2023.

We wish you all the best for the festive season!

The EAPIL blog won’t stop running during the Summer, but new posts will come out at a slower pace in the coming weeks.

Business as usual will resume at the beginning of September.

Meanwhile, guest posts are always welcome. Those wishing to submit a piece, are invited to get in touch with the managing editor, Pietro Franzina, at blog@eapil.org.

Enjoy the Summer break!

Just a few days have passed since the team of the EAPIL blog welcomed Erik Sinander as a new editor. The time has come, already, for a new welcome post, this time for Martina Mantovani: we are glad to have you onboard, Martina!

Martina, who has authored some guest posts for the blog in the past (see here and here), currently works as a Legal Assistant at the Court of Justice of the European Union and is a PhD Candidate in Private International Law at the University of Paris Panthéon-Assas.

Her first post was out a few minutes ago. It can be found here.

A new member has joined the editorial team of the EAPIL blog: Erik Sinander.

Erik is a senior lecturer in private international law at the Stockholm University. Being specialized also in labour law, he hopes to contribute to the blog with posts about e.g. private international labour law as well as general developments in the field of private international law from the Nordic countries.

His first post has just been published.

Welcome, Erik!

It’s been another busy year for the EAPIL blog. The 310 posts we have published in 2021 have attracted about 180.000 visits and some 190 comments.

Interactions on social media have been on the rise, too. We witnessed an increase in the number of followers on LinkedIn (they are more than 1.000 now), and in the intensity of their reactions. Meanwhile, the number of those following our Twitter account (@eapilorg) has reached 400: we are glad to see that our tweets are often retweeted and quote tweeted. Thank you!

Unsurprisingly, the impact of Brexit on existing instruments in the field of private international law ranked among the key topics of the year. Actually, one post of out ten, among those published in 2021 on the EAPIL blog, referred to Brexit in one way or another.

The case law of the Court of Justice relating to judicial cooperation in civil matters also attracted a consistent flow of visits, and so did Marta Requejo’s monthly posts on the upcoming Court’s judgments and the scheduled conclusions of the AGs.

The developments in domestic case law also proved to be of particular interest to our readers. Gilles Cuniberti’s post on a ruling of the French Supreme Court redefining territoriality of enforcement was the single most commented post of the year, with Gilles’ later post on the judgment of the UK Supreme Court in FS Cairo v Brownlie, on tort jurisdiction, ranking second in terms of comments.

Here are the blog’s five posts of the year, based on the number of visits received:

  1. Brexit and the Brussels Convention: It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue? by Matthias Lehmann, published on 12 February 2021, part of an on-line symposium on the Fate of the 1968 Brussels Convention which attracted contributions from a number of scholars, including guest posts by Andrew Dickinson, Serena Forlati and Alex Layton
  2. French Parliament Adopts Mandatory Law to Enforce Reserved Share in Succession Matters, a guest post by Christelle Chalas, published on 17 August 2021
  3. Swiss Court Refuses Post-Brexit Application of the Lugano Convention – Even Good Cases Can Make Bad (Case) Law, a guest post by Rodrigo Rodriguez, published on 10 March 2021
  4. Is the 2005 Hague Choice-of-Court Convention Really a Threat to Justice and Fair Play? A Reply to Gary Born, a guest post by Trevor Hartley, published on 30 June 2021
  5. The Principle of Mutual Trust in EU law in the Face of a Crisis of Values, a guest post by Cecilia Rizcallah, published on 22 February 2021

The above ranking tells one thing the editors are well aware of: guest posts represent a crucial contribution to this blog.

So, here’s a message to both old and new guest bloggers out there: your submissions are welcome in 2022 as they have been in the past year. So don’t hesitate to get in touch with us: we are eager to read you!

With this post, the EAPIL blog takes a short Winter break. Blogging will resume on 3 January 2022.

All the best for the new year!

All best wishes to the members of the European Association of Private International Law, the readers of (and subscribers to) the EAPIL Blog, the guest bloggers and all those involved in the Association’s events.

Marco Pasqua, who has been serving as the social media manager of the European Association of Private International Law, is now also an editor of the blog. His first post, on the 2022 Work Programme of the Commission, has just been published and can be found here.

Marco is a PhD student at the Catholic University of Milan.

Summer has come! The blog will remain open, but blogging will be lighter in the coming weeks.

We will resume our usual 5-post-a-week pace at the end of August.

We wish our readers and all EAPIL Members all the best for their holidays.

Stay safe, and enjoy the break!

The post you are reading is the 500th post of the blog of the European Association of Private International law since the blog was launched in November 2019.

How have things gone for the blog over this time? The statistics below provide some answers.

Blog Subscribers

The number of those who wish to be notified by e-mail of new new posts has steadily grown over the months. They currently exceed 540.

Views

How many people come and visit us? The figure below shows the number of times a unique visitor has viewed the blog or any of its posts. To date, views exceed 170.000 in the aggregate.

Geo Stats

Where do our readers come from? The color gradation in the maps below shows the countries where blog visitors are based: the greener the country, the larger its share of the overal blog viewers.  

World

Europe

Top 10 – World Countries
Germany: 10,55%
Italy: 10,22%
Luxembourg: 9,66%
Netherlands: 7,86%
United Kingdom: 7,83%
France: 7,32%
Spain: 6,17%
United States: 4,56%
Belgium: 4,13%
Poland: 2,94%

Post Categories

Posts are grouped, according to their content, into different categories. The five categories with the most posts are, in order, scholarship, case law, normative texts, views and comments and conferences and academic events.

Comments

The aim of the EAPIL blog is not just to inform readers but also to foster debate on any issues relating to private international law, consistent with the goals of the Association. Readers’ comments are crucial to that. They are very welcome! So far, blog posts have received more than 230 comments.

The Most Commented Post

The post that has received the most comments is French Supreme Court Redefines Territoriality of Enforcement over Debts, by Gilles Cuniberti, published on 18 March 2021. It discussed two judgments delivered by the French Supreme Court for civil and criminal matters which extended the reach of French attachments to any claims owed to third parties established in France, irrespective of whether the third party had its headquarters in France or abroad, and irrespective of the situs of the debt. It attracted 14 comments.

Guest Posts

While most of the posts are written by the blog editors, the blog regularly hosts contributions by academics and practitioners form outside the team. So far, the blog has welcomed posts from specialists based in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Singapore, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland and United Kingdom. Those willing to submit a guest post, are invited to write an e-mail to blog@eapil.org.

And don’t forget: the blog, and the Association generally, is active on social media too. So, join us also on Twitter (@eapilorg) and LinkedIn!

As president of EAPIL and an editor of the blog, and on behalf of all the officers of the association and the editors of the EAPIL blog, I would like to wish to the members of the association and the readers of the blog the best for year 2021.

In 2020, the blog has published 325 posts. In case you missed some of them, here are the 15 most popular ones:

  1. Corona Virus and Applicable Law
  2. COVID-19 and the Right to Respect for Family Life under Article 8 ECHR
  3. UK Applies for Accession to Lugano Convention
  4. Paris Court Issues Anti Anti Suit Injunction
  5. New Courts for International Commercial Disputes in Germany
  6. The Impact of Corona Virus on the Management of Judicial Proceedings in Italy
  7. Law and Global Value Chains at the Time of Covid-19: A Systemic Approach Beyond Contracts and Tort
  8. French Supreme Court Accepts First Degree Renvoi in Parenthood Matters
  9. Wikingerhof: A View from Oxford
  10. Another Preliminary Reference on the Succession Regulation Involving (and Referred by) a Polish Notary
  11. CJEU Significantly Weakens Jurisdiction Clauses in Case Assignment
  12. Anti-Anti-Suit Injunctions by German Courts – What Goes Around, Comes Around
  13. On ‘Habitual Residence’ under the EU Regulations on Family Matters: Once and for All?
  14. Human Rights in Global Supply Chains: Do We Need to Amend the Rome II Regulation?

Many good wishes for the Holiday Season and the New Year from the Editors of the EAPIL blog!

Blogging will be light in the coming days, but we plan to gradually resume our usual publishing pace on 7 January.

The first post of the EAPIL blog was published one year ago, on 25 November 2019. More than 300 posts have followed since, written by the blog’s editors and by no less than twenty guests.

We are trying to make the blog richer in contents, and improve its visibility.

Various private international law specialists across Europe and beyond have offered to prepare guest posts for publication in the coming days or weeks. We are eager to read their contributions and share them with our readers.

In the meanwhile, we are working to make the blog – and the Association, generally – more active on social media.

Marco Pasqua, an Associate Member of the Association, with a special interest in collective redress and the liability of corporate groups for violation of EU competition law, has kindly accepted to serve as the Association’s social media manager. Thanks a lot, Marco!

So, join us also on Twitter (@eapilorg) and Linkedin!

We are happy to announce that Alina Ontanu, of the University of Rotterdam, has joined the team of the EAPIL blog! Check her first post, which is out today.

As indicated in the inaugural issue of the EAPIL Newsletter, we wish to further expand the team. Interested EAPIL members are encouraged to get in touch with the managing editor, Pietro Franzina, at pietro.franzina@unicatt.it.

Applications from scholars or practitioners willing to report about developments in countries other than the countries currently covered by the team are especially welcome (the team is now covering Cyprus, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, and Spain).

The Blog is also seeking to appoint a social media manager, to improve and consolidate the Blog’s presence on LinkedIn, Twitter etc. Those applying for editor are encouraged to state whether they would also be happy to take care of the latter aspects.

The editorial team in charge of the EAPIL blog is delighted to announce that a new editor has joined the team.

Her name is Anna Wysocka-Bar, and she teaches Private International Law at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków.

Her first post has just been published.

Welcome on board, Anna!

If you notice something strange on the EAPIL website today, don’t worry. We’re upgrading some of the site functions, which may result in small disruptions. The site as such is up and running. Apologies for any inconvenience!

Marion Ho-Dac, of the Polytechnic University of Hauts-de-Francehas joined the team of editors of this blog. Check her first post here!

We are delighted to announce that Matthias Lehmann, of the University of Bonn, has joined the team of editors of the EAPIL blog! Check out his first post, regarding the ruling of the Court of Justice in Bondora.