Focus Area I: IPR – Is it Edible?

Die kurze Antwort lautet natürlich: Nein. Die längere, wie so oft bei Juristen: Es kommt darauf an.

First of all: IPR stands for International Private Law. However, if you now imagine finding, for example, English, Italian, or Spanish regulations on purchase, rental, or real estate law, you’d be mistaken – as was I, by the way, as a student when I first heard about this focus area. But that didn’t stop me from studying it.

International Private Law does not contain regulations of substantive (international) private law; rather, it answers the question of which substantive national law is applicable in international cases involving multiple nationalities. To address this, the EU legislator has enacted the Rome, Brussels, and other regulations.

Is all this too theoretical? No problem. A hypothetical example: a French driver on vacation in Barcelona hits a Hungarian cyclist, who then wants to claim pain and suffering compensation. Now the big question: which law is applicable? French law, because the driver is French and possibly has insurance for such cases? Spanish law, because the accident happened in Barcelona? Or Hungarian law, because the injured party is from Hungary? This question is a very important preliminary one, not only because one might have to deal with foreign legal systems, as in our example the Hungarian with the French or Spanish, and possibly find a lawyer who is familiar with them, but also, of course, because one might have to consider which court (Hungarian, French, or Spanish in our case) to file the claim for pain and suffering compensation with, should an out-of-court settlement not be possible.

And this is precisely the question that IPR addresses in depth. Ultimately, it “only” answers the preliminary question of which law applies in international, cross-border cases. But, those who read carefully might also identify the limitation of IPR from the example…
That’s right: It generally only applies to cross-border cases within the EU. However, non-EU countries can join IPR through international treaties.

Otherwise, every country worldwide also has (or should at least have) conflict-of-laws rules, such as the EGBGB here in Germany, which also regulate which law applies in cross-border situations. Regarding the respective national conflict-of-laws rules, it must then, of course, be clarified whether they are to be examined as primary or secondary to IPR or other international legal regulations.

Und um abschließend zur Ursprungsfrage zurückzukommen: das IPR lässt sich nicht essen wie ein Apfel, kann aber Juristen durchaus dabei unterstützen, ihre „Brötchen zu verdienen“.

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