Keys to Regulation (EU) 650/2012 in light of the jurisprudence of the Court of Justice of the European Union: from specialization to (in)coherence through the myth of the principle of unity and unambiguous autonomous qualifications

Abstract

Regulation (EU) 650/2012 on successions revolutionized the legal regime of successions in EU Member States linked by the Regulation, and has generated a great deal of questions and problems of interpretation. Five years after its validity, the CJEU has uncovered some of these questions, although in doing so it has opened up new doubts and has not run out the difficulties of interpretation inherent in a subject as complex as rooted in national legal traditions. In some cases the court is highlighting the need for a single jurisdiction to hear the different issues related to the succession; in other cases, also to satisfy the principle of the unity of the succession, it delimits the scope of the Regulation by extending the succession matter as much as posible or imposing European qualifications even above national jurisprudence and extends the jurisdiction rules to national courts to issue national certificates of succession. However, on another occasion, it opts for a qualification of the jurisdictional function linked almost exclusively to the processes of contentious jurisdiction, thus, it seems to give in to the inconsistencies of the Regulation or contribute to them.