Principiul interpretării autonome în dreptul internaţional privat european: efecte asupra calificării actelor juridice

Rezumat

In private international law, applications of “substance over form” are in close connection to the principle of autonomous interpretation, according to which the terms and concepts found in European regulations of private international law (international jurisdiction, applicable law, cross border enforcement and recognition) are to be interpreted in a uniform manner, independent from the understanding that similar concepts would have within the national legal systems of the Member States. As a first application, even though the “form” is given by national law, as a first classification of the legal concepts readily available to practitioners, the “substance” may be completely different if the matter is one of international jurisdiction, applicable law or cross border enforcement or recognition. Secondly, if the “form” is given by the phrasing of the regulations themselves, sometimes the “substance”, as the autonomous interpretation given by the European Court of Justice to that phrasing, may be substantially different regardless of recourse to national law. This paper aims to analyze these applications mainly from a procedural standpoint (international jurisdiction, cross border enforcement and recognition), complementing a previous study centered on applicable law.