EU SUCCESSION REGULATION No 650/2012

Regulation No 650/2012 of 4 July 2012 on succession

H. Pamboukis

with the assistance of Dr. A.-P. Sivitanidis

heir or the legality of certain dispositions of property upon death, such as joint wills,

and as to reserved shares (the content and the extent of protection thereof).

Significant differences existed in terms of private international law choices of

Member State laws, as well. Some Member States were following the binary system,

by submitting inheritance of movables and immovables to a different conflict-of-

laws rule (e.g. Belgium and France). Other Member States adopted a uniform con-

flict-of-laws system for succession matters, which varied as to the connecting factor:

some States, such as Greece with Article 28 of the Greek Civil Code (GrCC), chose the

link of citizenship; other States the link of last domicile or last habitual residence of

the deceased (‘de cujus’). These differences were exacerbated by the different atti-

tudes that Member States were adopting with regard to renvoi. Some, such as Greece,

generally exclude renvoi –save in exceptional cases– while others, such as France,

accept it.

And certainly significant and influential on the solutions adopted by the Regulation

(due to the reasonable nature of their solutions) have been the three Hague Conven-

tions (i.e. those prepared under the auspices of the Hague Conference), namely the

Convention of 1961 on the form of testamentary dispositions, which faced a great

success, and those of 1973 concerning the international administration of the es-

tates of deceased persons, and of 1989 on the law applicable to succession, which

although not very well received, however are important scientific texts that inspired

the EU Succession Regulation.

There have been, therefore, four necessary and fundamental choices

reflected to

the Regulation, successively set forth below:

1. The principle of unity of the law

Inspired by the aforementioned 1989 Hague Convention on the law applicable to

succession, the EU Succession Regulation adopts the monistic approach (as opposed to

the dualistic one), meaning that one single law governs the succession in its entirety.

An interesting and important aspect, as well as a correct choice, is the adoption of the

principle of unity, not only as a conflict-of-laws rule but also as a jurisdiction rule.

The principle of unity adopts habitual residence of the deceased both as the basis of

general jurisdiction (Article 4) and as a connecting factor for the conflict-of-laws rule

(Article 21(1)).

Thus only the courts of the place where the deceased had his last habitual residence

shall have jurisdiction to rule on the succession as a whole, when the habitual resi-

dence is located in a Member State bound by the Regulation.

If the deceased did not have his habitual residence in a Member State, the Regula-

tion establishes a subsidiary jurisdictional basis, also applying to the succession as

5. See Bonomi/Wautelet,

Le droit européen des successions

, p. 43 et seq.