Towards a European personal and family statute?

Abstract

From a perspective based on Union law, the Court of Justice has been developing the method of recognition with the aim of ensuring the vocation of unity and extraterritoriality of the personal and family status throughout the territory as the only way of guaranteeing the enjoyment of European freedoms, and has constructed a mechanism that allows European citizens to cross the borders of the European area while preserving their personal and family characteristics. In an area in which competence lies in the hands of the States, but in which fundamental rights are very much present, the recognition of a situation or act validly created in one Member State in the other Member States becomes an intermediate mechanism that favours the continuity and permanence of civil status while respecting the diversity existing in the Member States. This paper will analyses the latest developments at European level in the field of recognition linked to the civil status of persons with the aim of considering the present and future consequences they may have on the
establishment of a European personal and family status.