Croatian Law

The coordinated approach in the application of the MPR along with the existing instruments of European PIL aimed at simplification of procedures will obviously bring certain challenges to the courts dealing with matrimonial property in divorce proceedings, legal separation and annulment of the marriage or a succession case. Efforts will have to made in order to dismantle the obstacles arising from national procedural solutions, such as differing rules on competence of different authorities in divorce, succession and property-related proceedings, type of proceedings (contentious, non-contentious) and manner in which the proceedings are initiated (ex officio, at the request of the parties; prior or after mandatory counseling or mediation between spouses). Additionally, competent authorities will face the exercise of reconciling and accommodating solutions provided under the MPR and national substantive (family and succession law). Tensions may also arise from the interpretation of national PIL law, in regard to certain basic principles, such as principle of exclusivity of domestic nationality under Article 3 para 1 of the Croatian PIL Act of 2017. While the coordinated application of Regulations in divorce and property-related proceedings may result in the different courts deciding on different aspects of the same matter, with the possibility of issuing conflicting judgments, in succession and property-related proceedings it could lead to the same court applying different substantive laws in regard to succession and matrimonial property. This fragmentation is obviously not desired by the European legislator and will probably have to be dealt with in future by the CJEU. Additional complexity will arise from the fact that MPR is an enhanced cooperation Regulation only and certain Member States will be third countries in the context of the matrimonial property regime. In this sense, it seems that there is a rather challenging task upon the competent authorities to ensure that the complexity inherent to the analysed coordination of the European PIL instruments does not hinder the EU citizens in exercising the rights the EU confers on them.