Title pages and contents

The international child abduction is regulated in the Hague Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, in the Council Regulation (EC) No 2201/2003 of 27 November 2003 concerning jurisdiction and the recognition and enforcement of judgments in matrimonial matters and the matters of parental responsibility, repealing Regulation (EC) No 1347/2000 (Brussels II bis), and in the domestic law — in the Code of Civil Procedure. In the recent years the Regulation Brussels II bis was subject to review. As a result drawbacks were indicated and amendments have been proposed, in particular with a view of simplifying the procedures. The changes were triggered by the increasing number of cases in which one of the parents removes the child without a consent from the other. The Ministry of Justice does not provide any data on the amount of cases taking place in Poland. It is nevertheless certain that this amount has increased in comparison to previous years. Moreover, it is acknowledged that contrary to the Hague Convention and the EU Regulation, many children abducted by their parents are retained in Poland. The amendments to the Code of Civil Procedure seem to address this situation and streamline the process of the return of the children. The question remains: do the proposed amendments to the EU Regulation and those already enacted in the Code of Civil Procedure warrant to a sufficient degree that the welfare of a child — being one of the determinants of these regulations — is safeguarded?

The legal effects of the use of artificial intelligence algorithms need to be assessed not only at the level of national law, but also at the level of private international law. The initial point of assessment is to determine the law applicable to legal events related to artificial intelligence. The conflict of laws analysis of artificial intelligence also allows to expand the knowledge about traditional private international law institutions, such as ordre public clause. The paper does not pretend to fully explain the issue of conflict of laws of artificial intelligence. Its aim is to make a preliminary verification of the conflict-of-laws methods based of existing instruments. The study aims to start an academic discussion on artificial intelligence in the context of the conflicts of law. It is important as legal events related to artificial intelligence algorithms are characterized by considerable complexity.

Since August 17, 2015 the courts of the Member States of the European Union apply the conflict-of-laws rules adopted in the EU Succession Regulation (EU) in succession matters. From the Polish point of view, this constitutes not only the change of the rules applied for the purposes of determining jurisdiction and the applicable law, but also a new approach to the overriding mandatory provisions.

Contrary to other European instruments of private international law, the Succession Regulation neither uses the term “overriding mandatory provisions”, nor defines its meaning. Nevertheless, in Article 30 the Regulation provides for application — irrespective of the law applicable to the succession under its conflict rules — of the special rules of the State, where certain immovable property, enterprises or other special categories of assets are located, and which — for economic, family or social considerations — impose restrictions concerning or affecting the succession in respect of those assets, in so far as, under the law of that State, they are applicable irrespective of the law applicable to the succession.

The interpretation of this provision cause difficulties. It is not clear whether the concept of the special provisions embodied in Article 30 refers to the concept of overriding mandatory rules, well known in the European private international law, or whether it constitutes an original solution. Another controversial issue discussed in the paper is the relevance of the mandatory rules of the forum or the third State other than those mentioned in Article 30.

The question of which law should govern the third-party effects of assignments of claims was considered during the preparation of the Rome I Regulation. The European Commission’s proposal for the Rome I Regulation admitted the law of the assignor’s habitual residence as the law that should apply to the proprietary effects of assignments of claims. Finally, EU Regulation on the law applicable to contractual obligations did not include the issue of the third-party effects of the assignment. However, Article 27(2) of the Rome I Regulation required the European Commission to present a report on the question of the effectiveness of assignments of claims against third parties accompanied, if appropriate, by a proposal to amend the Rome I Regulation. Proposal for a Regulation on the law applicable to the third-party effects of assignments of claims (COM(2018) 96 final) is a response to this request.

This paper analyses current draft of the new EU Regulation, the rules on determination of the third-party effects of assignments of claims (law of the assignor’s habitual residence and law of the assigned claim) and "super conflict rules" in specific cases. The author argues that the law of the assignor’s habitual residence remains the appropriate conflict rule for proprietary effects of assignments of claims.

This commentary examines the judgement of the CJEU of 18 October 2016 in case C-135/15 Republik Griechenland v. Grigorios Nikiforidis. The judgement in question concerns the issue of treatment of foreign overriding mandatory provisions under the Article 9(3) of Regulation No 593/2008. This topic is the subject to a great deal of controversy and academic discussion. The ECJ concluded that the mentioned provision must be interpreted as precluding overriding mandatory provisions other than those of the State of the forum or of the State where the obligations arising out of the contract have to be or have been performed from being applied, as legal rules, by the court of the forum, but as not precluding it from taking such other overriding mandatory provisions into account as matters of fact in so far as this is provided for by the national law that is applicable to the contract pursuant to the Regulation. This interpretation is not affected by the principle of sincere cooperation laid down in Article 4(3) TEU. In this respect the judgement of CJEU brings significant clarification on the question, whether a court of the forum can have regard to foreign overriding mandatory provisions, which do not belong to the legal system of the country of performance of the contract on the level of the applicable substantive law. However, there are still questions arising under Article 9(3) of Rome I Regulation, which need to be clarified.

The terms ‘characterization’ (‘classification’) and ‘exercise of characterization’ refer in particular to the efforts made to determine which conflict of law rule — and in the sense presented in this paper, also rule on jurisdiction — which is part of the law of the forum State, should be applied to the circumstances of a particular case.

In relation to the norms of private international law of the European Union, the triumph of an autonomous characterization at first sight seems undeniable. The term autonomous characterization (in principle — ‘autonomous interpretation’, the case law usually does not distinguish between exercise of characterization and exercise of interpretation) has been referred to over the last fifty years in order to describe the vast majority of operations of interpretation undertaken in relation to the norms of EU private international law.

The contemporary concept of characterization in private law of the European Union, although consistently referred to as ‘autonomous’, does not fully meet the criteria thereof. The papers argues that while the starting point was the autonomous characterization in its pure form (stage one), over time it partially gave way to the place of characterization according to the EU law-oriented legis fori (stage two), and finally it was enriched with new elements which gave it the form of a specific functional characterization (stage three). It is not so much about the consistency of the results of the exercises of characterization with the universal understanding of certain concepts. Exercises of characterization are carried out through the prism of their effects, so as to ensure the effectiveness of the norms of EU law (effet utile) other than rules on conflict of laws and on jurisdiction.

The choice of court agreement (forum selection clause) is effectively concluded if there is no doubt that the party has actually become acquainted with its content. The Court of Justice of the European Union focuses on those aspects of the conclusion of the contract that allow the assessment that the other party is not surprised by the establishment of a subjective link. The compliance with formal requirements implies that the parties agreed on the conclusion of the contract. There are no objections about so understood “real consent of the parties” as a consequence of fulfilling not only the requirements as to the form, but above all as the way of the conclusion of the contract. The acceptance of the thesis that since the party expressed the undoubted consent to conclude the contract, there is thus no problem of the interpretation of the declaration of intent, is impossible. There is no dispute that the interpretation of a declaration of intent is a legal matter,
since the methods of interpretation are determined by the law. According to the Polish Supreme Court, on the basis of Regulation 1215/2012 there is no problem of seeking of the applicable law, because the rules for the interpretation of a jurisdictional agreement should be interpreted from the provision of art. 25 of this regulation. This position is based on the main argument that any deviation from the autonomous rules of interpretation creates the danger that the courts of the Member States will differently determine the law applicable. The Court of Justice of the European Union accepts that an objective (normative) method of interpreting party’s statements should be used. In some situations, it is necessary to apply legis causae to effectuate a supplementary interpretation of the declarations of will.