Full denomination
EAPIL Working Group on International Property Law
Chair and contact
Eva-Maria Kieninger (kieninger@jura.uni-wuerzburg.de)
Type of group
Working Group with a limited number of participants
Current members
- Janeen Carruthers
- Gilles Cuniberti
- Morten Fogt
- Ivan Heredia
- Teemu Juutilainen
- Eva-Maria Kieninger (chair)
- Afonso Patrão
- Teun Struycken (until he joined the Netherlands’ government)
- Jonathan Schenk
- Balázs Völcsey
- Anna Wysocka-Bar
Mission statement
So far, International Property Law has not been a subject of its own of any Europeanisation of Private International Law, but it has been touched upon at its margins by the European succession regulation (see the famous Kubicka case) and the Regulation on matrimonial property. Rights in rem also play a role for the rules on exclusive jurisdiction (Article 24 nr. 1 Brussels Ibis Regulation). Furthermore, numerous directives, especially in the realm of financial law, use the lex rei sitae as a connecting factor.
This fragmentation and the fact that Member States’ autonomous rules on international property law are by far not uniform although most, if not all, still use the lex rei sitae principle as a starting point, call for some in-depth study on the continuing value as well as the disadvantages of the lex rei sitae rule, its scope in relation to property, whose situs is unclear/unknown/accidental, and the possible role and limitations of freedom of choice of law.
Challenges and aims
The Working Group on International Property Law aims to:
- exchange information on current legislation and case law in the field of international property law, with a focus on (but not limited to) the EU Member States
- draw up proposals for law reform and codification of international property law both on the level of the EU and on national/international levels.
Meetings of the Working Group
From 2021 until 2025, the members of the Working Group met in Würzburg (2021), in Aarhus (2022), in Luxembourg (2022), in Amsterdam (2023), in Krakow (2023), in Coimbra (2024) and in Antwerp (2025).
Preliminary Draft Proposal
The Preliminary Draft Proposal for a European Regulation on International Property Law is available in two versions: (i) text only and (ii) text with comments and comparative notes.
The draft starts from the lex situs principle, but provides a number of special rules, giving limited party autonomy and registration a major role to play: for example, it would be possible for parties to a secured transaction to choose as the applicable law the law of the debtor’s centre of main interests, provided that the state where the COMI is situated allows for the registration of such a choice. For immovables, the group proposes a limited choice of law for the content of a mortgage in order to facilitate cross-border real estate-financing without the need to harmonise mortgage law or introduce a Euro-mortgage. We propose to extend the lex registrationis, which is traditionally applied to aircraft, ships and trains, to regular motor vehicles in order to provide a connecting factor that is more stable than the situs. Other special rules concern cultural objects, assets in transit and assets in the exclusive economic zone.
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