FL-EUR

Family Law in Europe: An Academic Network, FL-EUR, was established at a Founding Meeting in Amsterdam on 1-2 February 2019. FL-EUR currently unites 34 prominent experts, both academics and public officers, in the field of family & law from 31 European jurisdictions. The ambition of the FL-EUR network is to cover all European jurisdictions.

The purpose of FL-EUR is close academic cooperation amongst the experts, and between the experts and other stakeholders in the field of family and law, aimed at:

• accumulation and dissemination of knowledge of both family law in the books and in action;
• promotion of comparative and multidisciplinary research and education in the field of family and law;
• learning from one another’s experiences; and finally,
• providing up-to-date comparative data for European, supranational and national bodies.

FL-EUR activities are in general aimed at substantive family law, child law, the law of persons and related subjects of inheritance law, but do not include Private International Law.

During the first meeting, the members of FL-EUR chose Empowerment and Protection of Vulnerable Adults as its first working field. Based on initial quickscans of all jurisdictions, FL-EUR's coordinating group has drafted a questionnaire in close cooperation with all FL-EUR’s members. Country reports for all jurisdictions have been produced by country reporters. These reports are currently being published on the FL-EUR website and can be found here. The initial comparative results of these country reports will be presented at the second FL-EUR Conference on 24 November 2023 in Amsterdam.

Finally, on the basis of the country reports the common core, best practices and pitfalls will be uncovered in order to put together a range of possible solutions that could be used by national Governments, European and International organisations and professionals and their associations. 

FL-EUR has committed itself to applying a problem-solving, multidisciplinary approach, entailing a combination of the functional comparative law method and multidisciplinary methods. Legal solutions will be described and analysed in their political and socio-economic context. The experts will also describe the underlying policy considerations and political and academic debates behind the legal solutions. If available, existing empirical evaluations of relevant legislation will be included in the work, providing evidence of which national legal solutions work and which do not. FL-EUR intends to disseminate the results of its work through organising conferences and seminars, open-access publication of national reports, articles and published books.

FL-EUR is a private academic initiative independent from any governmental or political influence. All FL-EUR members participate in the Network on their personal title and do not represent their governments, universities, courts or other employers