There is a key value embedded in the EU regime: legal certainty, as explained by Marta Requejo Isidro in this final chapter of Part I. Requejo Isidro examines the impoverishment that Brexit represents in the specific context of private international law and transnational litigation, in both commercial and family law, as this exit means a significant loss in terms of legal certainty for all parties involved.
Admittedly, the hurdles of uncertainty regarding jurisdiction, or the disadvantages of losing a swift system for passporting UK judgments into Europe will not affect all stakeholders equally: some groups of the population, such as consumers, employees, small businesses, children or maintenance creditors, are likely to endure worse experiences than major litigants in complex corporate litigation. This chapter analyses the complexities of Brexit in this field as well as the contributions of English and Scottish legal systems to the development of EU private international law from a continental European perspective. It concludes that Brexit means overall impoverishment. EU law is as it is – not civil law, not common law, not even mixed, but European – thanks to many influences, including the very important British common law perspective.
Recodification and private international law: to the issue of principles