Europeizacja prawa prywatnego międzynarodowego — cel, ograniczenia, wyzwania
Europeanization of the Private International Law — Purpose, Limits, Challenges

Summary/Abstract: The development of the European Private International Law — the supranational conflicts law of an international organization with the integration purposes — is an event without any precedent. The real significance of the process of unification of the PIL rules in Europe far exceeds the mere regulation of the spatial conflicts of laws. It seeks to establish a legal area based on the idea of the “sovereignty of an individual”, referring to Locke’s and Kant’s philosophy. The legislative activity of the European Union may recall some of the processes that accompanied the birth of the modern nationstates: the private law unification had for the latter an important symbolic dimension and meant building ties between the authorities and the commonwealth of citizens, no less important than the creation of a sovereign power equipped with an amount of competencies defined by public law. The article highlights and discusses several important elements evidencing the importance of the process of the unification of Private International Law for the further federalization of the EU. Firstly, the author devoted his attention to the constitutional dimension of the PIL unification and the gradual transfer of legislative and treaty-making powers from the Member States up to the level of the Community institutions. Secondly, the shrinking importance of the principle of nationality in the light of the European law of conflict of laws has been remarked; application of the lex patriae does not support building the European identity of the EU citizens and may be contrary to the fundamental freedoms. Thirdly, the potential significance of the doctrine of “mutual recognition of the legal relationships”, which reminds the country of origin principle known from the ECJ previous jurisprudence, tends to undermine the usage of the method of conflict of laws in the intra-EU commerce. One should expect that the desire for closer integration between the European societies through such means as the private international law will induce the resistance of the Member States for which maintaining the impact on the civil-law relationships of their own nationals is a matter of preserving their self-identity and sovereignty.

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