Thanks to the intervention of the European Parliament in June
2015, the Commission has recognised the inadequacy of the legal
position published by Your Europe Advice on the particularly
British and English aspects of the non-application of the
Succession Regulation n°650/2012. Please see prior postings
on this point.
The inadequate level of response to British enquiries on the
Succession Regulation by Your Europe Advice has been raised
by the Legal Services Directorate of the European Parliament with
the Commission. The reason was that Your Europe Advice is
supervised by the EU Commission who has responsibility for it.
The problem is that Your Europe has taken it upon itself to
advise European lawyers and notaries dealing with these issues
inadequately, and without full reference to the English legal
principles involved.
One response from this Panel was to avoid the issues, by
advising the enquirer to lobby their MP for the United Kingdom to
accede to the Regulation.
To be clear Your Europe is made up of a panel of some sixty odd
lawyers nominated by the Commission.
The written response came from Věra Jourova, stamped 23rd July,
2015, but only received by the Parliament in 2016. I have a
copy, but not yet an official one. In sum the response was "it's
complicated....." Of course it is, that is why Your Europe's
attempts to comment upon matters of English law in absolute
ignorance was totally wrong.
Those in Europe and in the UK who placed reliance upon this
Panel, may need to review their position.
I refer particulary to the abuse by Your Europe of
correspondence betwwen Lord McNally, who should have known better
and Sir Roger Gale MEP, who could also have checked it, resulting
in an abject failure of the Ministry of Justice to analyse its own
laws and apply them correctly. The manner in which that error
was then propagated by the Your Europe Advice Panel as law, rather
than a political position throughout Europe was exponential.
More to follow next week ....