Mária Patakyová

The concept of the European international private law is not strictly determined. The European international private law is being created on the ground of the non-existence of the European private law, since the comprehensive legal regulation of the private law relations remained in the authority of Member States.

The diversity of legal regulations of private law relations and procedural issues within particular Member States might have been solved by means of domestic legislation of the international private law, but the need for the high integrity of the internal market has required the regulation of the qualitatively higher degree. The unification of the conflict rules is able to ensure this high standard. The unification will safeguard the uniform procedure regardless of the state of the forum. In the procedural field it is necessary in this context to rule out conflicts of state powers by determining criteria for the international jurisdiction and to ensure the smooth acceptance and enforcement of the judicial decisions, delivered by the court of other Member State (so called free movement of the judicial decisions in the sense of the fifth freedom).

Following the mentioned requirements the term European international private law is used in this chapter for set of all legal rules regulating the private law relations with the international element, including the procedural rules, which belong to the Community law or to the domestic law of the Member State in consequence of the implementation of the directive, as well as the legislation stemming from the European regional agreements.