Mediation in cross-border succession conflicts and the effects of the EU Succession Regulation

The world is getting closer. More and more people are living abroad, enter into binational marriages and own real estate in different countries. This has a big impact on inheritance matters. The European Union has taken this into account and adopted the Regulation (EU) No 650/2012, so called Succession Regulation. This regulation unifies jurisdiction over inheritance matters across Europe and introduces the European Certificate of Succession. The study at hand shows that the Regulation itself is not very known yet – not even among experts. The same can be said about the Directive 2008/52/EC (‘Mediation Directive’). The effects of both regulations have been analyzed in this research. Therefore, the legal differences are presented in country reports – for Austria, Germany, France, Italy, Poland and Sweden. Furthermore, the research report gathers information about the possibilities and challenges of mediation in the field of cross-border succession conflicts. More than 100 expert interviews with mediators, lawyers, notaries and judges were conducted and evaluated in order to get an insight in this difficult and increasingly important field. This publication is part of the project FOMENTO (Fostering mediation in cross-border conflicts on civil and succession matters), cofounded by the Civil Justice Programme of the European Union, which was carried out from 2017 to 2019.