After four years since Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of the European
Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on jurisdiction, applicable law,
recognition and enforcement of decisions and acceptance and enforcement of
authentic instruments in matters of successions and on the creation of a
European Certificate of Succession has been implemented, in the paper certain
theoretical, as well as implementationpractical issues will be analysed and
discussed, based on the results of an empirical study on the implementation of
the Regulation in Croatia and Slovenia during May – September 2019. The aim of the research is to detect and analyse the deficiencies of the
existing normative regulation and problems in the implementation of the
Regulation through the analysis of the normative framework of the Regulation,
as well as European and national, Croatian and Slovenian implementing regulations
and the experience of three groups of Croatian and Slovenian practitioners
(judges, notaries, attorneys-at-law). After introductory remarks on the subject
matter and methodology of the research, in the paper the succession matter with
a cross-border element, the material scope of the Regulation and its relation
to other European regulations are determined. Then follows the part of the
paper on the principle of the unity of the estate, in which certain issues with situations of the existence of property constituting the
estate in third states are discussed, especially in neighbouring post-Yugoslav
states. Within the fourth part of the paper on the jurisdiction, the issues of
determining the habitual residence in practice, the challenges faced by the competent
authorities in determining jurisdiction based on that link are analysed and
discussed, as well as specific issues with the agreement on the
choice-of-court. Challenging situations of double lis pendens in Member States
are also discussed, as a consequence of the duty of a competent authority in
some Member States, such as Croatia and Slovenia, to initiate succession
proceedings ex officio if immovable property is located in its territory. The
final part of the paper contains a summary synthesis of the main research
results, as well as some reflections on the coherent implementation of the
Regulation in Croatia and Slovenia, and consequently in other Member States.