Family law in the EU’s acquis communautaire : where is it going?

Abstract

In 1957 the founding fathers of the European Economic Community envisaged a legal instrument to regulate the economic relations between the Member States - hence the Rome Treaty. The ultimate aim was to establish 'an area without internal frontiers in which the free movement of goods, persons, services and capital is ensured'. In 1985, the Commission, published the White Paper 'Completing the Internal Market', where it proposed an Internal Market whereby the four freedoms are complemented by the suppression of all kinds of physical barriers, technical or fiscal, which hinder the fundamental freedoms or distort competition. The means to achieve the aims of the Community are the progressive approximation of the economic policies of the Member States together with the establishment of an Internal Market, and following the Maastricht Treaty, also, the establishment of an Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). [Excerpt]