Desplazamiento ilícito de menores de un Estado miembro a un tercer Estado y Reglamento 2201/2003Sentencia del Tribunal de Justicia de 22 de marzo de 2021, asunto C- 603/20 PPU

Abstract

The ECJ judgment of 22 March 2021 held that article 10 of Council Regulation (EC) N.o 2201/2003 must be interpreted as meaning that it is not applicable to a situation where a finding is made that a child has, at the time when an application relating to parental responsibility is brought, acquired his or her habitual residence in a third State following abduction to that State. In that situation, the jurisdiction of the court seized will have to be determined in accordance with the applicable international conventions, or, in the absence of any such international convention, in accordance with Article 14 of that regulation.This comment endorses the solution of the ECJ and analyzes the relevance of the reasons given both by the Court and by the Advocate General in his Opinion on the case. Finally, the author warns that the analyzed case may reveal a problem of coordination between Regulation 2201/2003 (and also Regulation 2019/1111) and the article 7 of the Convention of 19 October 1996 on Jurisdiction, Applicable Law, Recognition, Enforcement and Cooperation in Respect of Parental Responsibility and Measures for the Protection of Children. A situation that the new article 97 of the Regulation 2019/1111 does not consider.