Die Übergangsbestimmungen der EuErbVO

Dinah Riss examines the intertemporal conflict-of-laws provisions contained in Article 83 of the European Succession Regulation (EU Succession Regulation) from the perspective of the protection of legitimate expectations. Her analysis focuses on the tension between the state's interest in implementing the new legal regime and the protection of the legitimate expectations of those subject to the law.
The study begins by identifying the fundamental changes introduced by the EU Succession Regulation when compared with Germany's autonomous private international law of succession. The analysis of the transitional provisions is framed, on the one hand, by the rule-of-law limits that constrain legislators when enacting transitional legislation and, on the other hand, by the practical interpretative principles developed in intertemporal private international law. In this context, Dinah Riss addresses the prohibition of retroactive legislation under both European Union law and constitutional law and discusses the primacy of EU law. In interpreting Article 83 of the EU Succession Regulation, she follows the internal system of intertemporal conflict of laws as conceptualised by Burkhard Hess.
The author then analyses selected issues arising from the simultaneous applicability of the old and the new legal regimes. Particular attention is paid to the scope of the principle of favourability, with a special focus on the treatment of partial choices of law during the transitional period, the retroactive effect of individual transitional provisions, and the choice-of-law fiction contained in Article 83(4) of the EU Succession Regulation. She demonstrates that, in particular, the retroactive revival of a binding effect may result in a disproportionate interference with the testator's legitimate expectations. At the same time, the study develops concrete proposals for interpreting the Regulation in a manner that avoids violations of the prohibition of retroactivity and closes gaps in the protection of legitimate expectations.