Adjudicating Europe

On Monday December 7, the Court held a hearing in case C-403/09 Deticek. The case concerns interpretation of Article 20 of 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. It appears that a referring court has been in doubt about its jurisdiction to rule provisionally on an application to have custody of the child restored, while the court dealing with the substance (disposing of the divorce proceedings) is a court of another Member State.

While Deticek appears as yet another reference for a preliminary ruling, it has been brought to our attention that in fact this case has written EU history in Slovenia. For this is the first case referred to the ECJ by a Slovenian court. And this occurred only after five years of Slovenian full EU membership, when Slovenia was, after a Maltese court had made a reference just before this summer, already occupying an infamous place of an outlier: a Member State without a single reference to the ECJ.

However, in so doing not only has history been written, it has, again, repeated itself. As, so the mythology goes, the champagne corks flew in the air when the first case arrived to Luxembourg in the early 1960s, so they did in Slovenia. Furthermore, the referring judge was even awarded a special prize, a crystal star, for contributing towards recognition and greater role of Slovenia in the EU. Cheers!

The Editors