CONCENTRATION OF JURISDICTION IN CROSS-BORDER FAMILY MATTERS – CHILD ABDUCTION AT FOCUS

Court of Justice of European Union (hereinafter CJEU) recently rendered a decision dealing with organizational issues of judiciary, where such internal organization of a distinctive Member States had an impact on functioning and application of European Union (hereinafter EU) rules. Particularity of this decision in the framework of judicial cooperation in civil matters is that unlike usual conflict of jurisdiction among courts situated in several different Member States, here the problem is with the conflict of jurisdiction of the courts situated within one and the same Member State. This paper elaborates on the function and nature of rules of international and internal jurisdiction; concentration of jurisdiction in family matters – both at universal and European level, with particular interest in child abduction matters; CJEU ruling in case C-498/14 of 9 January 2015. In the end authors question whether the Member States are still free to enact internal rules that influence rules on jurisdiction enacted with EU regulation, if such rules are impeding the functioning on internal EU legal order