Fields of Expertise and Legal Strategy at Peeters Law

Private international law, known in the Anglo-American tradition as the conflict of laws, does not constitute a separate substantive field of law, but rather an infrastructure of coordination. It cannot, however, be regarded as a merely facilitative framework: a substantial proportion of its rules apply on a mandatory basis, leaving only a circumscribed margin for party autonomy. Its function is to bring order to situations in which several legal systems intersect and in which distinct normative layers operate simultaneously. Where divergent jurisdictions and rules converge — whether between Belgium and Spain, between Germany and Portugal, between New York and Ontario, or between any State of the Union and a Member State of the European Union — private international law provides a structure that secures legal certainty while preserving space for strategic deliberation.

The discipline is approached through a number of distinct, though increasingly interconnected, traditions. Within the European Union, it is shaped principally by the Brussels and Rome Regulations, by the Succession Regulation (EU) 650/2012, by the Conventions adopted under the auspices of the Hague Conference on Private International Law, and, at national level, by such instruments as the Belgian Code of Private International Law of 16 July 2004, the Spanish provisions of the Código Civil and the Ley de Enjuiciamiento Civil, the German Einführungsgesetz zum Bürgerlichen Gesetzbuche (EGBGB) and the Portuguese Código Civil. Within the Anglo-American tradition, the same questions are addressed through the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws in the United States, through Book Ten of the Civil Code of Québec, and through the conflicts jurisprudence developed at common law in the other Canadian provinces. The reader will accordingly find, in the four cardinal questions which follow, both the familiar contours of his or her own system and the points at which that system encounters its counterparts.

1. The Four Cardinal Questions

The systematic framework of private international law is determined by four cardinal questions.

The first concerns jurisdiction, namely the identification of the authority competent to decide and the scope of the powers conferred upon it. To the European reader this is the question governed, in civil and commercial matters, by the Brussels Ia Regulation, supplemented for family and succession matters by the corresponding Union and Hague instruments; to the Anglo-American reader the same question presents itself as the familiar inquiry into personal and subject-matter jurisdiction, complemented by the doctrine of forum non conveniens.

The second concerns the applicable law, that is to say the normative framework which takes precedence in the legal assessment of the facts. This is the question to which the European choice-of-law regulations (Rome I for contractual obligations, Rome II for non-contractual obligations, the Succession Regulation for cross-border estates), the choice-of-law analysis of the Restatement and the most-significant-relationship test are each, in their distinct ways, addressed.

The third concerns the recognition and enforcement of decisions, that is the manner in which a judgment transcends the territorial boundary of its origin. Within the Union, this question is governed primarily by the Brussels Ia regime; between the Union and third States, it is increasingly shaped by the Hague Convention of 2 July 2019 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters; in the United States it is governed by principles of comity and, as between States of the Union, by the Full Faith and Credit Clause; in Canada it is governed by the principles articulated in the conflicts case-law of the common-law provinces and by the corresponding rules of the Civil Code of Québec.

The fourth concerns the interpretation of foreign law, namely the manner in which external norms are translated and embedded within the receiving legal order. This question is not exhausted by the rules of pleading and proof of foreign law, whether under the iura novit curia approach traditionally favoured in continental jurisdictions, under Rule 44.1 of the United States Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, or under the various Canadian rules of evidence; it extends to the deeper and more demanding task of conceptual translation between legal traditions which do not share a common vocabulary, and in which apparently equivalent terms — trust and fiducie, domicile and woonplaats, property and propriété — frequently denote materially different institutions.

Each of these four questions opens a field of tension within which actors position themselves, exercise choices, and anticipate the possible outcomes of their conduct.

2. Fields of Application

The scope of private international law extends across a wide range of domains. It comprises, in particular, cross-border contracts and choice-of-forum clauses, which arise as readily in commercial dealings between Antwerp and Rotterdam as between Brussels and New York; family relationships of an international dimension, including transboundary marriage, divorce and parental responsibility under the Hague Conventions of 1980 and 1996, and under Regulation (EU) 2019/1111 (Brussels IIb); estates with connecting factors in several States, in which the unitary approach of the Succession Regulation, the scissionist approach traditionally followed in the United States and in the common-law provinces of Canada, and the protective rules of forced heirship characteristic of the civil-law tradition each yield substantially different outcomes; liability with transboundary consequences, including product liability and online torts; and companies and property structures whose relevant elements are situated in different jurisdictions, with the holding of immovable property in one State by persons or entities resident or established in another constituting a recurrent and characteristic problem of the field.

3. The Multi-Layered Character of the Sources

The regulation of private international law reflects the layered character of the international legal order. Supranational instruments pursue uniformity, as exemplified within the European Union by the Brussels and Rome Regulations and by the Succession Regulation, and at the wider international level by the Conventions adopted under the auspices of the Hague Conference. International treaties operate as bridges between legal systems, in the manner of the New York Convention of 1958 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, to which the United States, Canada and the Member States of the Union are all parties. National legislation secures the alignment of domestic law with international norms, whether through codified instruments such as the Belgian Code of Private International Law of 16 July 2004, the German EGBGB, the Spanish and Portuguese Civil Codes and Book Ten of the Civil Code of Québec, or through the case-law tradition of the Restatement and of the conflicts jurisprudence of the common-law Canadian provinces. Model rules and principles, of which the Hague Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts are a prominent example, indicate the direction of future convergence.

In their interaction, these layers do not constitute a hierarchy in the strict sense, but rather a network of nodes within which choices are continuously made and equilibria are sought. The European reader will recognise here the familiar coexistence of Union law, international treaty law and national law, in which the primacy of Union law operates within carefully delimited spheres of competence; the North-American reader, accustomed to the supremacy clause and to the orderly relationship between federal and State law, will find in the European setting a more horizontal architecture, in which the various sources coexist and interpenetrate in ways that defy any simple pyramid.

4. Methodological Grounding

Private international law is more than a body of conflict rules: it is a structuring mechanism by which disputes are prevented from disintegrating into fragmentation. By ordering, in a systematic manner, the questions of jurisdiction, applicable law and recognition, it provides a framework that is at once analytically coherent and practically operative. It functions, at the same time, as a corrective force, giving expression to values that are common to the European and the North-American legal traditions alike: legal certainty, predictability and procedural fairness, the last of which finds its counterparts in the right to a fair trial under Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, in the corresponding guarantees of Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, and in the due-process tradition of North-American constitutional law.

Private international law thus operates as the invisible architecture of interlegality: a silent structure which channels tensions, orders perspectives, and renders cooperation possible within a plurality of legal systems. For the European citizen whose life and assets extend beyond a single Member State, no less than for the North-American client whose personal, familial or patrimonial situation extends across the Atlantic, an understanding of this architecture is not a matter of academic refinement but of practical necessity.

International Succession Law as a Multidimensional Practice

International succession law occupies the intersection of patrimony, culture and law. Where different legal systems converge upon a single estate, its administration calls not only for a command of the formal rules of each system concerned, but also for the capacity to coordinate those systems, to optimise the fiscal outcome, and to attend to the cultural sensitivities which inevitably accompany the transmission of wealth from one generation to the next.

1. Core Analytical Dimensions

The handling of international estates is structured by four dimensions which, although analytically distinct, are in practice closely intertwined.

The first concerns the drafting and interpretation of wills and other instruments of last will, including the choice of law made in accordance with the applicable rules on professio iuris, in particular Article 22 of the Succession Regulation (EU) 650/2012. The second concerns the coordination of succession law with the matrimonial property regime of the spouses, since the composition of the estate cannot be determined before the matrimonial mass has been liquidated; the entry into force of the Matrimonial Property Regulation (EU) 2016/1103 and of the Partnership Property Regulation (EU) 2016/1104 has rendered this coordination at once more accessible and more demanding. The third concerns the strategies developed against double taxation, by means of the bilateral conventions for the avoidance of double taxation in the field of inheritance and gift taxes and of the broader instruments of international fiscal coordination. The fourth concerns the harmonisation of the fiscal and the civil-law frameworks, having due regard to the national and regional particularities which, within federal States and within decentralised systems such as Belgium, Spain and Germany, give rise to substantial variation in the rules applicable to a single estate.

2. Fields of Application

International succession law is engaged in a wide range of situations. It is engaged in the drafting and execution of wills and inheritance agreements with cross-border effect, including those concluded between spouses or partners domiciled in different States; in the structuring of layered patrimonies comprising operating companies, holding companies, trusts and foundations, and in the qualification of such structures within legal systems which do not all recognise the trust as such; in the administration of the estates of expatriates and of persons with multiple residences or nationalities, who frequently leave assets in jurisdictions of which they were never civilly resident; in the lodgement of succession declarations and the conduct of distributions which give rise to fiscal obligations in several jurisdictions; in the navigation of the cultural and structural differences between succession traditions, including the divergence between usufruct and full ownership, between community and separation regimes of matrimonial property, and between forced heirship and the testamentary freedom characteristic of the common-law tradition; and, increasingly, in the treatment of emergent phenomena such as digital estates, encompassing crypto-assets and online accounts, and of ecological successions involving forests, carbon credits and other environmental assets whose legal qualification is still in the course of being settled.

3. Legal Instruments

The normative framework of international succession law is multi-layered and draws upon several distinct bodies of law. At the level of the European Union, the principal instruments are the Succession Regulation (EU) 650/2012, which establishes a unitary connecting factor based, in the absence of a valid choice of law, upon the habitual residence of the deceased at the time of death, together with the Matrimonial Property Regulation (EU) 2016/1103 and the Partnership Property Regulation (EU) 2016/1104. At the national level, the framework comprises the relevant civil codes — including the Spanish Código Civil, the Belgian Code civil and Code of Private International Law, the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch and EGBGB, and the Portuguese Código Civil — as well as the autonomous conflict-of-laws rules applied in States that fall outside the scope of the Union instruments. The fiscal framework rests upon the bilateral conventions for the avoidance of double taxation in matters of inheritance and gift, and upon the model conventions developed in particular under the auspices of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Regional competences give rise to substantial variation in inheritance taxation at the level of federated entities, regions and autonomous communities, with the consequence that the locus of taxation may, within a single State, materially affect the burden borne by the estate.

4. Europe Beyond the Union and the International Perspective

The reach of international succession law extends well beyond the European Union. Within Europe, Switzerland applies its autonomous system of private international law as codified in the Federal Act on Private International Law of 18 December 1987; the United Kingdom continues, since its withdrawal from the Union, to apply its classical connecting factors, in particular domicile for movables and the lex situs for immovables; Norway and Iceland maintain a partial alignment with Union law through the European Economic Area, although the Succession Regulation as such does not extend to them.

Beyond Europe, the United States applies a combination of federal rules and of the law of the several States, with the consequence that the succession of a single individual may, in the absence of careful planning, be governed by as many regimes as there are States in which assets are situated. Canada presents a comparable plurality, in which the conflicts rules of the common-law provinces and those of the Civil Code of Québec yield distinct outcomes. The codifications of Latin America assign considerable weight to the institution of forced heirship — la legítima — which substantially restricts the testator's freedom of disposition. Islamic legal systems combine religious prescription with national legislation in ways which require informed and respectful navigation, particularly where assets, heirs or the deceased present connecting factors with both an Islamic and a non-Islamic jurisdiction.

International estates are never purely legal matters. They call for an equilibrium between patrimony, family interests and legal certainty, set within a complex matrix of national, European and international rules. International succession law thus presents itself as a multidimensional practice, in which legal coordination, fiscal optimisation and cultural sensitivity are inextricably bound together.

.Contract Law as a Multidimensional Practice

Contract law cannot be reduced to a single normative layer. Contractual relationships unfold within a stratified framework in which several dimensions intersect.

There is, first, a territorial dimension, comprising the conflict-of-laws rules on the applicable law and on the choice of forum, articulated within the European Union by Regulation Rome I and by the Brussels Ia Regulation, and within the United States and Canada by the choice-of-law analyses developed in the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws, in Book Ten of the Civil Code of Québec and in the conflicts jurisprudence of the common-law provinces. There is, secondly, a doctrinal dimension, encompassing such principles as party autonomy, good faith (bonne foi, Treu und Glauben, buena fe, and the duty of good faith and fair dealing recognised in Section 205 of the Restatement (Second) of Contracts and in Section 1-304 of the Uniform Commercial Code), proportionality, and the prohibition of the abuse of rights. There is, thirdly, a cultural and linguistic dimension, arising from the divergences of meaning that subsist between multilingual contexts and between legal cultures whose conceptual vocabulary is not perfectly congruent — including, prominently, the divergence between the civil-law and common-law traditions and the institution, within Canada, of a bijural legal order. There is, fourthly, a corrective dimension, expressed in the tests of transparency and proportionality, in consumer protection, and in the redress of power imbalances between contracting parties. There is, finally, a European and international dimension, comprising treaties, instruments of soft law and the multilayered case-law of the national courts, of the Court of Justice of the European Union, of the courts of the United States and of Canada, and of arbitral tribunals operating under instruments such as the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods of 11 April 1980 (CISG), to which the United States and a substantial number of European Member States are parties.

1. General Terms and Conditions: Structure and Strategy

General terms and conditions embody the pre-contractual structuring of the obligations to be assumed: they define the regime of liability, the available remedies and the chosen forum for the resolution of disputes. Their validity and enforceability vary appreciably according to the context in which they are deployed.

In business-to-business relationships they serve the values of predictability and efficiency, subject to correction by the rules on economic dependence, by the European legislation on combating late payment in commercial transactions (notably Directive 2011/7/EU and its national transpositions), by the doctrines of unconscionability and of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing as applied by United States courts, and by the developing body of law on manifestly unbalanced clauses on both sides of the Atlantic. In business-to-consumer relationships they are subject to a strict scrutiny of transparency and proportionality, in conformity, on the European side, with the mandatory consumer protection regime laid down in Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts (as refined by the case-law of the Court of Justice), and, on the North-American side, with the regimes developed under State and provincial consumer protection legislation, the Federal Trade Commission Act, and the corresponding Canadian federal and provincial statutes. In digital contexts general terms and conditions frequently constitute the sole binding instrument between user and platform, and are accordingly subject to an evolving body of digital regulation, including the European Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065) and Digital Markets Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/1925), as well as the developing State-level data-protection and consumer-protection regimes in the United States, including the California Consumer Privacy Act and its successors, and the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act in Canada.

2. Business-to-Business Contracts: Autonomy under Conditions

Commercial freedom of contract operates within legal and economic constraints which are seldom fully apparent at the moment of contracting. Power asymmetries between the parties, the mandatory rules of the applicable law and the overriding mandatory provisions within the meaning of Article 9 of the Rome I Regulation, together with the corresponding doctrines in the United States and Canada concerning unconscionability, public policy and the limits of contractual freedom, condition the space available for negotiation. They shape, in particular, the clauses governing liability, force majeure, hardship (and its North-American counterparts of impracticability and frustration), and the resolution of disputes, including arbitration clauses governed in the international sphere by the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (New York, 10 June 1958), to which the European Member States, the United States and Canada are all parties.

3. Business-to-Consumer Contracts: Corrective Protection

In contractual relationships involving a consumer, contractual autonomy is systematically circumscribed by a regime of mandatory protection. Transparency, proportionality and effective access to justice constitute the core of this corrective dimension. Within the European Union, the protective regime is articulated through the unfair terms regime referred to above, through the Consumer Rights Directive (2011/83/EU), through the rules on the sale of goods and the supply of digital content (Directives (EU) 2019/770 and 2019/771), and through the collective redress mechanisms introduced by the Representative Actions Directive (EU 2020/1828). Within the United States, comparable protective effects are achieved through Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code, through the Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act, through the consumer protection statutes of the several States, and through the class-action mechanism. Within Canada, they are achieved through the consumer protection legislation of the provinces and through the recognition of class proceedings.

4. Online Contracts: Digital Complexity

Digitalisation has materially transformed the nature of contractual binding. Online terms are at once indispensable, in that they alone formalise the relationship between platform and user, and vulnerable, in that they are concluded in conditions which seldom permit genuine negotiation or attentive reading. They give rise to questions of growing intricacy concerning algorithmic and automated contracting; the international enforceability of clauses concluded across borders; the validity of consent expressed by a single click or by continued use of a service, in respect of which the North-American jurisprudence on clickwrap and browsewrap agreements offers a body of comparative experience of considerable interest; and the relationship between technological innovation and the safeguards traditionally afforded by the law of contract.

5. Doctrinal and Cultural Grounding

The systematic framework of contract law is nuanced by doctrine, by comparative law and by soft-law instruments such as the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and the Principles of European Contract Law, to which may be added, in the North-American context, the Restatement (Second) of Contracts. Core concepts — good faith, reasonableness, guarantee, warranty, condition, cause, consideration — require ongoing interpretive alignment across different legal cultures and linguistic frameworks. The translation between such concepts is rarely a matter of vocabulary alone: the civilian notion of cause has no exact common-law counterpart, the common-law doctrine of consideration finds no precise equivalent in continental codifications, and the English good faith does not exhaust the content of bonne foi, Treu und Glauben or buena fe. Such translations touch upon the underlying assumptions of the legal traditions concerned and demand a measured awareness of the limits of conceptual equivalence.

Contract law thus presents itself as a multidimensional practice in which national codifications, Union and international instruments, the legal traditions of the United States and of Canada, cultural contexts and normative corrections converge. The contract, in this view, is not merely an instrument of private autonomy, but also a locus of protection, of coordination and of cultural translation.

Liability law stands at the intersection of several normative layers. It encompasses contractual and non-contractual liability alike and is increasingly shaped by cross-border dimensions. The classical questions of fault, damage and causation are embedded within a broader context in which national legislation, European instruments, international treaties and soft law converge, and within which the doctrines and procedural traditions of the United States and of Canada hold a place of comparable significance for any practitioner whose horizon extends across the Atlantic.

Core Structure

Three principal categories form the foundation of the field.

Contractual liability concerns the breach of obligations arising from agreement, including non-performance, defective delivery and the breach of express or implied warranties. Non-contractual liability addresses fault, damage and causal connection outside the contractual sphere, presenting itself in the civilian tradition under the heading of délit and quasi-délit, and in the common-law tradition under the rubric of tort, with negligence as its central category. Cross-border liability gives rise to questions of conflict of laws, of the determination of the applicable law and of the recognition and enforcement of foreign judgments, addressed within the European Union by Regulation Rome II, by the Brussels Ia Regulation and by the relevant Hague Conventions, and in the United States and Canada by the analyses developed in the Restatement (Second) of Conflict of Laws, in Book Ten of the Civil Code of Québec and in the conflicts jurisprudence of the common-law provinces.

These categories do not operate in isolation but in interaction. A cross-border transaction may begin in contract, end in tort, and simultaneously raise questions of applicable law and of international enforcement.

Fields of Application

Liability law manifests itself across a wide range of domains. These include the defective performance of agreements; damage caused by fault or negligence; pre-contractual liability and duties of advice (the civilian culpa in contrahendo and its functional analogues in promissory estoppel and the duty to negotiate in good faith); the assessment of damage and the modalities of redress; and international claims arising in the fields of transport, services and digital activity.

Concrete cases render the layered character of the field visible. A road accident involving parties from several Member States; a defective delivery within a cross-border commercial chain spanning Antwerp, Rotterdam and the eastern seaboard of the United States; a data breach by a cloud provider whose servers are distributed across several jurisdictions; environmental damage carried by rivers and air currents beyond national boundaries — each of these situations engages, simultaneously, several legal orders, several methods of calculation of damage and several procedural cultures.

Legal Instruments and Layered Regulation

The regulatory framework is multifaceted. It combines national codifications, including the Belgian and French Civil Codes, the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the Spanish Código Civil and Book Ten of the Civil Code of Québec, with the case-law tradition of the common-law systems, including the United States Restatements (Second) and (Third) of Torts and the developing tort jurisprudence of the Canadian common-law provinces. To these are added the principal European instruments — Rome I and Rome II, the Product Liability Directive in its successive recasts, and the developing body of digital and environmental liability regulation — together with the regulation in force beyond the Union, in particular in Switzerland and in the United Kingdom, and the international treaties and instruments of soft law, such as the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts and the Draft Common Frame of Reference, which serve as a source of normative guidance.

These instruments do not form a hierarchical pyramid but a network within which interpretation and application are continuously renegotiated.

Economic and Strategic Dimension

Liability is not only a legal matter but an economically charged one. Divergent methods for the calculation of damages, varying levels of litigation cost, and insurance coverage subject to territorial limitations all bear materially upon the position of the parties. The differences are particularly marked between the European tradition, which generally adheres to the principle of full compensation but is reserved as to punitive damages, and the United States tradition, in which punitive damages and the class-action mechanism occupy a more prominent place. Choice of forum, the phenomenon commonly described as forum shopping, and settlement strategies illustrate how actors anticipate one another's moves in a game that does not unfold within a single legal order.

Technological and Cultural Challenges

The digital transformation has rendered new questions pressing: the liability of online platforms, data breaches, the deployment of artificial intelligence and algorithmic decision-making, and the emergence of smart contracts. These phenomena are inherently transboundary and bring legal systems into direct confrontation with one another, as illustrated within the Union by the Digital Services Act, by the proposed Artificial Intelligence Liability Directive and by the recast Product Liability Directive, and within the United States and Canada by the developing federal and State or provincial regimes governing platform responsibility and data protection.

Legal cultures, at the same time, shape expectations as to redress. The civil-law tradition and the common-law tradition approach damage and remedy in materially different ways; mediation and arbitration assume, in certain contexts, a prominence equal to or exceeding that of judicial proceedings, particularly in commercial and transboundary matters.

Enforcement and Prevention

Rules acquire their meaning through their application. Inspectorates, regulatory authorities and courts correct structures strategically designed to evade liability. International cooperation in the gathering of evidence, in enforcement and in asset tracing — reflected in instruments such as the Hague Evidence Convention, the Hague Service Convention, and the Hague Convention of 2 July 2019 on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Judgments in Civil or Commercial Matters — co-determines the effectiveness of liability regimes. The concern of the field is not exhausted by compensation after the event; it extends to prevention and to behavioural guidance, in which environmental liability, consumer protection and the duties of care recognised in digital services compel actors to exercise care before harm arises.

Normative Correction

In the background of the field, values such as proportionality, effective access to justice, the protection of weaker parties and the imperative of sustainability perform a corrective function. They find expression in the European context in Article 47 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and in Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, and in the North-American context in the due-process tradition of the United States and in the principles of fundamental justice recognised under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. This normative horizon makes plain that liability law is not merely an economic instrument, but also a socially and ethically embedded discipline.

Liability law is not a closed system but a multilayered structure in which national traditions, European harmonisation and international coordination converge. The classical distinction between contractual and non-contractual liability is supplemented by cross-border mechanisms and by normative corrections. Liability thus presents itself as a dynamic field of forces: territorially anchored, materially differentiated, culturally inflected and normatively corrected. Actors move within it as participants who anticipate one another's strategies, while rules at once create order and provisionally fix the equilibria within which that interaction takes place.

Social security, considered in its cross-border dimension, is a domain in which the law is in constant motion. It is here that mobility and solidarity encounter one another, often in a tension that is not easily resolved. National systems are required to position themselves in relation to European and international coordination, but also in relation to bilateral agreements and to the transnational principles that are progressively gaining recognition. The central question abides: how is social protection to be guaranteed where persons, undertakings and economic activities move across borders?

Dimension 1: Territorial Delimitation

The first layer concerns the delineation of competence and the determination of the system that is to apply. Within the European Union, this delimitation is governed principally by Regulation (EC) No 883/2004 on the coordination of social security systems and by its implementing Regulation (EC) No 987/2009. Outside the Union, the framework is provided by bilateral conventions and by so-called totalisation agreements, of which the agreements concluded between the United States Social Security Administration and a number of European States, and the agreements concluded by Canada under the Old Age Security Act, are leading examples.

The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union illustrated the fragility of this equilibrium. Matters which had previously been governed in a uniform manner were obliged to be renegotiated bilaterally and were ultimately reflected in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement and in its Protocol on Social Security Coordination. Each territorial delimitation is thus, in a meaningful sense, a provisional ordering, exposed in principle to renewed negotiation.

Dimension 2: Classification of Employment Relationships

The second layer turns upon the question of who qualifies as an employee and who as a self-employed person. Each system applies its own criteria: the Belgian test of subordination based upon the criterion of authority; the Spanish distinction between the trabajador autónomo, the asalariado and the intermediate figure of the trabajador autónomo económicamente dependiente (TRADE); the tripartite classification developed under the law of the United Kingdom into employees, workers and the self-employed; the multifactor tests applied by the courts and agencies of the United States, including the right-of-control test under the common law, the economic-realities test under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and the so-called ABC test as adopted in California and in a number of other States; and the corresponding analyses under Canadian federal and provincial law.

These differences are not technical only. They determine the gateway to social protection and they reveal the extent to which fundamental concepts are culturally conditioned and historically shaped within each legal system.

Dimension 3: Structuring of Activities

The third layer concerns the legal form given to economic activity. Contracts, corporate structures and fiscal arrangements are not adopted in a vacuum; they are strategies which determine the system within which the actor will be situated. The Belgian besloten vennootschap (BV), the Spanish sociedad laboral, the limited liability company (LLC) of the several States of the United States and the Canadian corporation are not neutral labels: each of them operates as an access point to a particular regime of contributions and of entitlements, and each of them carries distinct consequences for the social security position of those who exercise activity through it.

Dimension 4: Enforcement and Risk Analysis

The fourth layer concerns the mechanisms by which abuse and bogus self-employment are prevented. Labour inspectorates, social insurance institutions and tax authorities operate as counterforces which correct or sanction strategic choices made by the parties. The intensity of this oversight varies considerably as between systems, from the activity of the Belgian sociale inspectie and of the European Labour Authority to the audits conducted by the Internal Revenue Service of the United States, by the Department of Labor and by the Canada Revenue Agency. Enforcement, in this sense, constitutes the countermove in a continuous interaction between actors who position themselves in relation to the rules and institutions which delineate the boundaries of those rules.

Dimension 5: Normative Correction

The fifth layer is normative. It is here that economic freedoms encounter the social fundamental rights. Within the European Union, the freedom of movement and the freedom of establishment are continuously weighed against the protection of employees and of self-employed persons, in the case-law of the Court of Justice and in the operation of the European Pillar of Social Rights. Beyond the Union, distinct reference points apply: the Swiss principle of Sozialstaatlichkeit; the constitutional guarantees and statutory architecture of the United States Social Security Act; the rights recognised under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms together with the federal-provincial division of competence in social matters; and, in Latin America, the constitutional traditions which draw expressly upon the standards of the International Labour Organisation. These corrective mechanisms render plain that social security is not a technical system only, but also the expression of deeper values which the legal order is asked to safeguard.

Practical Applications

The layered character of the field becomes visible in concrete situations: the consultant who works temporarily in another Member State and is there subject to a different classification; the procedure for the issue of an A1 portable document, in which administrative bodies of different States may take divergent positions; the recognition of professional qualifications, which is harmonised within the Union but follows its own pathways in Switzerland, in the United Kingdom and in third States; the corporate structure deliberately selected with a view to obtaining affiliation with a particular system; the inspection which confronts legal form with factual reality; and questions of pension entitlement, in respect of which reference may be made to the section concerning international families.

In each of these situations, positions are taken, strategies are pursued and counter-strategies are devised: an interaction which unfolds continuously within and across the five dimensions.

Normative Instruments

The instruments that sustain the field are themselves multilayered. They comprise the European regulations and directives, the national legislation of the Member States and of third States, the bilateral and totalisation agreements, the standards of the International Labour Organisation and other international norms, and the soft-law instruments which articulate emerging principles of coordination. These sources do not form a hierarchical pyramid but a network in which the various legal systems respond to one another and adapt continuously to the situations which arise before them.

Cross-border social security thus presents itself as a matrix of tensions and of convergences. No uniform model exists; there are, however, nodes of agreement, including the protection against abuse, the requirement of coherence and the enduring tension between mobility and solidarity. Legal analysis in this domain cannot, accordingly, be one-dimensional. It must anchor territorially, distinguish materially, think structurally, monitor procedurally and correct normatively. Only in this manner does it become apparent that social security is not a national system only, but a dynamic field of forces in which law, economy and solidarity are continuously renegotiated.

International family law constitutes one of the most sensitive crossroads of the legal order. It touches upon families at moments of acute vulnerability: divorce, the division of assets, disputes concerning parental responsibility, the recognition of parenthood. Once these matters cross a frontier, the self-evident character of national law dissolves. The classical questions — which authority has jurisdiction, which law applies, how a decision is to be enforced, how the best interest of the child is to be protected — become windows upon deeper tensions in the structure of the law itself.

Architecture of Layers

At the foundation of the field lie the national codifications: the Belgian Civil Code (in particular Book 1 in its renewed form), the Spanish Código Civil, the German Bürgerliches Gesetzbuch, the Portuguese Código Civil, the Civil Code of Québec, and the corresponding instruments of the other systems concerned. Each expresses its own normative structure, shaped by tradition, language and culture.

Above these foundations rest the European load-bearing instruments. Regulation (EU) 2019/1111, generally known as Brussels IIb, has constituted, since its entry into application on 1 August 2022, the central instrument governing jurisdiction, recognition and the cooperation between authorities in matters of matrimonial dissolution and parental responsibility. Regulations (EU) 2016/1103 and 2016/1104 govern, respectively, matrimonial property regimes and the property consequences of registered partnerships. Regulation (EC) No 4/2009 governs maintenance obligations.

The multilateral pillars of the Hague Conference on Private International Law complete the structure: the Convention of 25 October 1980 on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction, the Convention of 19 October 1996 on the Protection of Children, the Convention of 23 November 2007 on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance, and the Convention of 29 May 1993 on Intercountry Adoption.

Human rights instruments form the capstone of the edifice. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the right to respect for private and family life. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out, in Article 3, the best interest of the child as a universal principle. The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, in Articles 7 and 24, gives expression to corresponding guarantees within Union law.

Considered together, these layers do not form a seamless cathedral but a mosaic: solid where rules converge, fragile where gaps emerge.

Fault Lines and Dissection

As Alfons Heyvaert observed, the legal order becomes truly visible only in its fault lines. International family law displays these fault lines with particular clarity: States which do not participate in the relevant treaties; parallel proceedings producing conflicting judgments; new social phenomena which fall outside the existing frameworks. The dissection of these layers — that is, the decomposition and analysis of the tensions which subsist between them — reveals both the manner in which the system functions and the points at which it falls short. This is not a merely technical exercise but a means by which the hidden wounds of the law are made visible and the corrections it requires are articulated.

Game and Strategy

Procedure, in this context, is more than technique. The choice of forum and the choice of law are strategic acts. The parent who introduces proceedings in Belgium hopes to secure an advantageous position; the partner who opens a case in Spain or in France deliberately opts for a different framework. This dynamic gives rise, on occasion, to forum shopping and to parallel proceedings. The law orders this contest by means of its jurisdictional rules, but it cannot eliminate the dynamic of anticipation and counter-move which is inherent in transboundary litigation. International family law is, accordingly, at once an architecture and a chessboard, in which order and dynamics coexist.

Corrective Layers

Where the fault lines are felt most acutely, fundamental rights intervene. Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights guarantees the right to family life. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child places the best interest of the child at the forefront of the analysis. This corrective layer is intended to prevent families, and in particular children, from being lost in the interstices between systems. It ensures that human dignity, and the protection of the most vulnerable party, remains the ultimate touchstone of the field.

Diversity and Contemporary Challenges

The field is further challenged by ongoing social change. Single-parent families depend more heavily upon international maintenance and are more exposed to the risks arising from exchange-rate fluctuations and from divergent methods of calculation. Arrangements involving donor conception and surrogacy raise difficult questions of filiation and of recognition, in respect of which the Member States of the Union, the United Kingdom, the several States of the United States and the provinces of Canada take positions which are far from uniform. LGBTQI+ families navigate between States which recognise their relationships and States which decline to do so, with consequences extending across marriage, parental responsibility and succession. Climate-driven migration sets families in motion without the law always providing for the requisite continuity of protection. These phenomena demonstrate that international family law is not a static body of rules but a living tissue, in continuous renegotiation with the realities to which it responds.

Procedural and Global Context

Alongside the questions of jurisdiction and applicable law, the recognition and enforcement of decisions and the gathering of evidence play a central role. A foreign judgment which is not recognised or enforced remains an empty shell. Brussels IIb and the Maintenance Regulation provide the principal mechanisms within the Union; international cooperation, however, often remains slow and uneven. The cross-border gathering of evidence — comprising witness testimony, documentary evidence and increasingly significant volumes of digital communications — likewise calls for coordination, in particular under the Hague Service Convention of 15 November 1965 and the Hague Evidence Convention of 18 March 1970.

Beyond the European Union, distinct frameworks apply. Switzerland operates under its Federal Act on Private International Law of 18 December 1987 (IPRG / LDIP). The United Kingdom, since its withdrawal from the Union, applies bilateral arrangements together with its retained body of law and the Hague Conventions to which it is party. The United States applies a combination of federal instruments — including the Uniform Child Custody Jurisdiction and Enforcement Act and the Uniform Interstate Family Support Act in their adoption by the several States — and State-level variations which give rise to complex transatlantic disputes; Canada presents an analogous combination of federal and provincial regimes, including the rules of the Civil Code of Québec and the family-law statutes of the common-law provinces. International family law, accordingly, is not exclusively a European concern, but a global network of convergences and divergences.

Methodological Layering

The analysis of this domain requires a multidimensional approach which proceeds across five registers. The territorial register addresses the questions of jurisdiction and of applicable law. The material register considers the manner in which national family-law norms collide and interact. The cultural and linguistic register attends to the manner in which semantics and tradition load concepts with meaning. The normative register considers the manner in which fundamental rights correct the outcomes that would otherwise be reached. The structural register addresses the manner in which the gaps that arise where coordination fails are to be identified and, so far as possible, repaired.

International family law embodies the tension between national autonomy and transnational coordination. It is at once a structure of layers, a chessboard of strategic moves and a fabric traversed by fault lines. As Heyvaert emphasised, it is precisely in those fault lines that the law reveals itself, not in illusions of perfection but in the naming of its shortcomings and the search for correction. What appears, accordingly, is that the field is never finished. It remains a living structure which must continually adapt, correct and reinvent itself. What endures is its foundation: human dignity, and in particular the protection of children, as an indispensable compass within a globalised legal order.

Real property law occupies the intersection of private-law structures of ownership, administrative regulation and international coordination. Ownership, lease and rights of use are never merely legal categories; they are embedded within broader social, economic and cultural contexts. Once real property transactions or disputes cross a frontier, a layered set of rules is set in motion: rules on jurisdiction and on the applicable law, rules on the recognition of foreign decisions, and the corrective influence exerted by fundamental rights.

Ownership and Co-Ownership

The organisation of the common parts of a building reveals with particular clarity the divergences between legal systems. Since the entry into force of Book 3 of the Belgian Civil Code in 2021, Belgium has been governed by a refined regime of apartment ownership, in which decision-making within the association of co-owners and the allocation of the common charges receive particular attention. Spain applies the regime of propiedad horizontal, in which the comunidad de propietarios takes decisions binding upon all co-owners. The corresponding North-American institutions — the condominium and the homeowners' association — present recognisable functional analogues, while differing in significant respects of governance and of the role of the syndic or property manager.

In practice such divergences may give rise to tensions. A Belgian heir who inherits an apartment in Málaga is required to enter a Spanish system of management and of contributions, the rules of which differ from those familiar to him or her. In succession matters, the exit from co-ownership introduces a further layer: Belgian heirs are accustomed to partition by notarial deed or by judicial procedure, whereas Spanish law typically requires an escritura de partición followed by registration in the Registro de la Propiedad. The Succession Regulation (EU) 650/2012 designates a single applicable law to govern the succession as a whole, but the implementation of that law remains anchored in the national systems of property registration and notarial practice.

Real Rights and Use Structures

Alongside full ownership, the European systems recognise a substantial range of use rights, including the long lease (erfpacht, emphytéose), the building right (opstal, droit de superficie) and usufruct. The Belgian system employs these figures as flexible instruments of estate planning and of urban development. Spanish law applies comparable concepts in the form of the usufructo and the derecho de superficie. What is striking, when these regimes are placed within a wider international perspective, is that in other legal families leasehold and building-right structures are not exceptions but the norm: in much of Latin America and in parts of Asia, the land remains the property of the State and only a building right is conferred upon the private actor; in the United Kingdom, the institution of the leasehold remains a structuring feature of urban property; and in the United States and in Canada, the bundle-of-rights conception of property opens the field to a range of estates and tenures (fee simple, life estate, leasehold) that does not map directly onto the continental categories. Considered against this background, the model of full ownership taken for granted in continental Europe is itself a particular and, on the global scale, less than universal arrangement.

Lease Law and the Contractual Dimension

The law of lease embodies the tension between freedom of contract and the protection of the weaker party. The Belgian system maintains distinct regimes for residential lease, commercial lease and agricultural tenancy, the residential regime falling within the competence of the Regions. Spain regulates these matters principally through the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos, which distinguishes between short-term and long-term contracts and which has been the subject of frequent legislative revision in recent years.

A holiday property let to tourists provides a telling illustration. In Spain, regional tourist licences and strict registration requirements apply, with substantial divergences between the autonomous communities and, on the Canary Islands, an additional layer of insular regulation. In Belgium, the applicable rules depend upon whether the arrangement qualifies as a residential lease or as a tourist letting. The Rome I Regulation governs the determination of the law applicable to the contractual relationship, but the administrative requirements remain national, and often sub-national, in character.

Spatial Planning and Administrative Litigation

Real property is inseparable from spatial planning and from public-law regulation. The Belgian system operates under the Flemish Spatial Planning Code (VCRO) and the corresponding instruments in the Walloon Region (CoDT) and in the Brussels-Capital Region (CoBAT). The Spanish system rests upon a layered architecture of national and regional planning legislation, with the Ley de Suelo at its foundation and with specific rules for coastal areas laid down in the Ley de Costas.

Disputes concerning permits and plans give rise to administrative litigation. In Spain, such proceedings are brought before the jurisdicción contencioso-administrativa; in Belgium, before the Raad voor Vergunningsbetwistingen or, where appropriate, the Council of State. A foreign owner who applies for a building permit on the Andalusian coast may encounter environmental restrictions of an intensity that would be unfamiliar in his or her own jurisdiction. Such divergences illustrate the manner in which the public interest and the rights of the owner are held in continuous equilibrium.

International Coordination and Recognition

In cross-border transactions or disputes, coordination becomes central. The Brussels Ia Regulation (1215/2012) determines the jurisdiction of the courts in civil and commercial matters; the Rome I Regulation (593/2008) establishes the rules applicable to contractual obligations. Beyond the European Union, Switzerland and the United Kingdom apply their own rules, while international instruments of soft law — the Draft Common Frame of Reference, the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts — provide guidance without possessing binding force.

The recognition and enforcement of foreign notarial deeds and of judicial decisions is of central practical importance. A Spanish escritura must take effect in Belgium, and a Belgian act of partition must take effect in Spain. This requires translation, in the literal sense and also in a more demanding substantive sense: concepts such as usufructo, fideicomiso, leasehold and the common-law trust have no exact equivalents within civilian systems and require interpretive bridges if they are to function within them.

Fundamental Rights and Correction

The right of property is protected by the national constitutions and, at the European level, by Article 1 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights and by Article 17 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. That protection is not, however, absolute. Restrictions are permitted provided that they pursue a legitimate aim in the general interest and are proportionate to it. The principle applies to expropriations, to building prohibitions and to environmental regulations alike. Proportionality, in this sense, operates as a doctrinal corrective mechanism by which property rights are situated within their broader societal context. Comparable corrective functions are exercised, within the United States, through the takings jurisprudence developed under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments, and, within Canada, through the constitutional and statutory frameworks governing expropriation.

Layering and Fault Lines

Real property law may be read as a layered structure across five registers. The territorial register comprises the rules of jurisdiction and the determination of the applicable law. The material register comprises the divergent regimes of ownership and of lease. The public-law register comprises permits and spatial planning. The normative register comprises fundamental rights and the principle of proportionality. The structural register comprises the fault lines that appear where coordination fails, including divergent levels of coastal protection, contradictory rules on the exit from co-ownership, and the differences between full ownership and the various forms of split or limited ownership.

It is these fault lines that render analysis and correction necessary. They make plain that ownership is never absolute, but is continuously recalibrated in the tension between autonomy, regulation and protection.

Real property law in cross-border perspective is at once an architecture and a game. It is an architecture, in that it is built from layers of national codifications, of European regulations, of international treaties and of fundamental rights. It is a game, in that the parties choose their forum, deploy strategies and make use of the available coordination mechanisms. The purchase of a holiday home on the Spanish coast; the distribution of an estate comprising real property in several countries; the challenge to a building permit on a sensitive coastal site: in each of these cases, the national rules are opened up and complemented by international coordination. In this manner the field reveals its true significance, which lies not in the management of bricks and land alone, but in the ordering of human relationships, in the protection of public interests, and in the pursuit of an equilibrium within a globalised legal order.

Company law constitutes something of a laboratory of layered legal phenomena. There is, on the one hand, the substantive layer of company forms, of articles of association and of internal organisation. There is, alongside it, the territorial layer, within which questions of applicable law and of judicial competence arise. There is, finally, the doctrinal layer of governing principles: the freedom of establishment, the protection of creditors and shareholders, proportionality and legal certainty. The interplay of these dimensions makes of company law a field which is, in its very nature, transboundary.

Substantive Foundations

The national systems form the building blocks. Belgium effected a thorough reform of its company law through the Code of Companies and Associations of 23 March 2019 (Wetboek van vennootschappen en verenigingen), which reduced the multiplicity of available forms and introduced a substantial measure of flexibility. Spain operates under the Ley de Sociedades de Capital of 2010, regularly amended, in which the protection of shareholders occupies a central place. Germany applies the Aktiengesetz and the GmbH-Gesetz; France, the Code de commerce; the Netherlands, Book 2 of the Burgerlijk Wetboek.

These national regimes do not operate in a vacuum. The European Union has, through Directive (EU) 2017/1132 and Directive (EU) 2019/2121, drawn the contours of harmonisation, in particular in respect of cross-border mergers, divisions and conversions. The Court of Justice has given these contours their concrete shape in a series of leading judgments — SEVIC Systems on cross-border mergers, Cartesio on the transfer of the company seat, VALE on cross-border conversions, Polbud on cross-border conversions without prior liquidation — which together demonstrate that European integration does not always lead to uniformity, but frequently exposes the fault lines between national autonomy and the freedoms guaranteed by Union law.

Beyond Europe, distinct paradigms apply. The United States operates a system of company law structured at the level of the several States, in which the State of Delaware occupies a position of particular dominance as a State of incorporation. This dominance is reflected in the influence of the Delaware General Corporation Law and of the case-law of the Delaware Court of Chancery, which together exercise a comparative influence well beyond the borders of the State itself. The United Kingdom, since its withdrawal from the European Union, follows its own course while retaining, in particular, the doctrine of wrongful trading under the Insolvency Act 1986. Switzerland applies its autonomous regime under the Code of Obligations. Canada presents a federal architecture in which the Canada Business Corporations Act coexists with the corporations statutes of the provinces, including Québec, where the bijural tradition adds a further layer of nuance. Asian jurisdictions such as Japan and Singapore combine, in their distinctive ways, continental and Anglo-American influences.

Fields of Application

The layered character of the field becomes apparent in a number of concrete domains.

Incorporation and amendment of articles. A Belgian BV that operates in Spain, a Dutch BV that establishes itself in Italy, a German GmbH that is converted into a Societas Europaea, or a Delaware corporation that opens a European place of business — each of these situations raises the question of which national formalities continue to apply and at which point the freedoms recognised by Union law take precedence.

Shareholder agreements and capital structures. France and Italy regulate these matters in a relatively prescriptive manner; the United Kingdom and the United States leave a considerably greater margin to party autonomy, with the consequence that shareholders' agreements drafted under Delaware or English law display a degree of contractual sophistication that civilian counsel approach with appropriate care.

Corporate governance. Germany retains the dualist board structure with statutory employee co-determination (Mitbestimmung); Belgium and Spain follow predominantly monist models; the Netherlands applies a hybrid approach. The United States and the common-law provinces of Canada apply a unitary board structure animated by the fiduciary duties of care and loyalty, with a developed body of case-law on the duty of oversight. The European debates concerning gender quotas and board diversity, reflected in particular in Directive (EU) 2022/2381, illustrate the normative corrective dimension that overlays the field.

Directors' liability. Since 1 January 2025, Belgium has applied a new regime, integrated into the Civil Code, in which the classical distinction between contractual and non-contractual liability has been replaced by a unified framework set out in Book 5 of the Civil Code, while preserving the statutory cap of Article 2:57 of the Code of Companies and Associations and providing a refined regime governing the concurrence of contractual and extra-contractual claims. Spain, under the Ley de Sociedades de Capital, retains the distinction between internal liability towards the company and external liability towards third parties. Germany imposes upon directors a duty to file for insolvency in due time, the breach of which constitutes Insolvenzverschleppung. The United Kingdom relies upon the doctrine of wrongful trading. The United States apply, at the level of the several States, the fiduciary duties of care, loyalty and good faith, supplemented in the vicinity of insolvency by particular duties owed in respect of creditors. Canada applies a comparable framework, refined by the Supreme Court of Canada in cases such as Peoples Department Stores Inc. (Trustee of) v. Wise and BCE Inc. v. 1976 Debentureholders. Each of these systems offers its own balance between the freedom of enterprise and the protection of creditors and other third parties.

Mergers, divisions and reorganisations. Within the European Union these operations are governed by Directive (EU) 2019/2121; outside the Union they remain subject to bilateral coordination or to the rules of private international law of the systems concerned, with particular complexity arising in transatlantic transactions in which Delaware corporate technique encounters European harmonising provisions.

Dissolution and winding up. Multinational structures confront legal orders with conflicting insolvency regimes, ranging from the collective protective approach characteristic of the German Insolvenzordnung to the more contractually oriented procedures of the common-law systems, including Chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code and the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act in Canada.

Normative Instruments

Company law operates within a broad normative framework. At the level of the European Union, the principal instruments are Directive (EU) 2017/1132 and Directive (EU) 2019/2121. At the national level, the framework is given by the Belgian Code of Companies and Associations, the Spanish Ley de Sociedades de Capital, the German Aktiengesetz and GmbH-Gesetz, the French Code de commerce and Book 2 of the Dutch Civil Code, together with the Delaware General Corporation Law and the Model Business Corporation Act in the United States, and the Canada Business Corporations Act and provincial corporations statutes in Canada. International and soft-law instruments include the UNIDROIT Principles, the Draft Common Frame of Reference and the OECD Principles of Corporate Governance. Fundamental rights and general principles supply a further layer of normative orientation: the freedom of establishment under Article 49 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, the protection of property and of contract, proportionality and legal certainty.

Company law in a cross-border perspective is at once an architecture and an arena. The reform of Belgian directors' liability law in 2025 illustrates the manner in which national choices remain embedded within a European and an international context. Where Belgium has sought uniformity through Book 5 of the Civil Code, Germany has placed its emphasis upon insolvency discipline, the United Kingdom upon wrongful trading, Spain upon the distinction between internal and external liability, and the United States and Canada upon the fiduciary duties of directors. These are different responses to a single underlying question: how is the freedom of enterprise to be reconciled with the protection of third parties? The field thus presents itself as a multidimensional fabric in which territorial embedding, substantive design and doctrinal principle are continuously interwoven.

Financial and Banking Law in a Cross-Border Perspective: Consumer Protection and the Functioning of the Market

Trust as Foundation

Financial contracts may, on paper, appear to be no more than bundles of clauses: rates of interest, schedules of repayment, securities, and ancillary obligations. A closer reading reveals, however, that banking and financial law is the infrastructure upon which trust itself rests. Without confidence in the predictability of contracts and in the protection afforded by the law, credit and investment lose their meaning. Consumer protection, accordingly, is not an obstacle to the market: it is the condition of the market.

The field lends itself to being read as a layered architecture. At its base lie the contractual arrangements themselves, which constitute its substantive layer. Above these are placed the territorial rules which determine the competent court and the applicable law. Higher still is found the doctrinal corrective, comprising the principles and fundamental rights which intervene where the systems fall short. Together these layers form a network of protection and of coordination, the equilibrium of which is required to be adjusted continuously to the situations that arise.

Game Theory: Markets as Strategic Fields

The game-theoretical analysis developed by Robert Cooter and Thomas Ulen has made plain that markets are not neutral arenas. Banks and financial institutions enjoy informational advantages, accumulated experience and considerable bargaining power. Consumers, by contrast, frequently occupy a structurally weaker position, with limited knowledge and modest room for negotiation. The asymmetry is, in this sense, structural rather than incidental.

In the absence of regulation, opportunistic behaviour is a rational strategy: complex interest clauses, hidden costs and misleading advertising serve to enhance the margin of the stronger party. The law, however, rewrites the underlying payoff structure. Duties of transparency, the ex officio examination of unfair terms by the courts, and a regime of penalties which has been considerably strengthened by the Omnibus Directive (Directive (EU) 2019/2161) together alter the incentives of the market participants. Since 28 May 2022, consumer protection rules may no longer be applied as a matter of mere indication; the penalties imposed upon their breach must be effective, proportionate and dissuasive. In this manner regulation renders cooperation more profitable than abuse, and cooperation thereby becomes the dominant strategy. The corresponding North-American approach, articulated through the consumer protection mandate of the Federal Trade Commission and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the United States, and through the work of the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, follows in substance a comparable logic, although the distribution of competences and the mechanisms of redress differ in significant respects.

European Integration: Protection as a Pillar of the Internal Market

The European internal market can function only on the condition that consumers in all Member States enjoy a minimum level of protection. Directive 93/13/EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts represented an early step in this direction; it has since been reinforced by the Omnibus Directive, which has, in addition, expressly drawn digital services and online platforms within the protective framework.

Complementary directives anchor further dimensions of the field: the regime of consumer credit (Directive 2008/48/EC, recently recast), the regime of mortgage credit for residential immovable property (Directive 2014/17/EU), the regulation of payment services (Directive (EU) 2015/2366, commonly known as PSD2) and the regulation of investment services and packaged retail products (the MiFID II framework and the PRIIPs Regulation). Each of these instruments contributes, in its own register, to a single end: the cultivation of trust in the market through the safeguarding of equilibrium in relationships that are, by their nature, asymmetrical.

National Anchorage and Fault Lines

Belgium. The Code of Economic Law protects consumers against unfair terms and unfair commercial practices. Following the Act of 4 April 2019, this protection has been extended to relationships between businesses, by means of a black list, a grey list and a general standard of manifest imbalance. An exception subsists in respect of financial services, which renders visible a structural fault line within the system. The Civil Code, in Article 5.52 of Book 5, supplements the framework with a residual provision sanctioning unbalanced clauses outside the classical scope of consumer law.

Spain. Royal Legislative Decree 1/2007 (general consumer protection), Law 16/2011 (consumer credit) and Law 5/2019 (residential real estate credit) together form the framework. The last of these instruments imposes a particularly strict regime of transparency: every mortgage contract must be the subject of prior notarial explanation and verification, an institutional safeguard which has few precise counterparts elsewhere.

Comparative Notes. Germany applies a refined regime of general terms and conditions law (AGB-Recht). France applies comparable corrective mechanisms through its Code de la consommation. The United Kingdom, since its withdrawal from the European Union, has retained much of the earlier acquis while conferring upon its supervisory authorities an enhanced measure of autonomy. The United States places emphasis upon disclosure and informational duties — most prominently through the Truth in Lending Act, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act — with relatively less emphasis upon substantive review of the balance of the contract; the developing State-level regimes of consumer financial protection, in particular in California and New York, have nevertheless added a more substantive corrective layer. Canada applies a federal-provincial regime in which the Bank Act, the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada Act and the Consumer Protection Acts of the several provinces operate in combination.

The Structural Fault Line

Supervision is, for the most part, organised at the national level, while financial products circulate across borders. This is the Heyvaertian fault line characteristic of the field: a system which promises protection but which executes that promise in a fragmentary manner. The ultimate safety net is provided by the higher norms: Article 38 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, Article 1 of the First Protocol to that Convention, and, where the situation involves children, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Within the North-American context, the protection of property under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution and under the Canadian Bill of Rights performs analogous corrective functions.

Case Study: Euribor and Mortgage Clauses

The Benchmarks Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2016/1011) recast the law of indexation in the European Union. Since 2019, Euribor has been determined according to a hybrid methodology under the supervision of the European Securities and Markets Authority. Transparency in this domain is of central importance. The case-law of the Court of Justice — notably the judgments in Kásler and in Andriciuc — has confirmed that the requirement of transparency is not exhausted by the mere readability of the contractual text, but extends to the genuine comprehension by the consumer of the economic implications of the clause to which consent is given.

Credit, Investments and Digital Services

Rights of withdrawal, the disclosure of hidden costs, the suitability and appropriateness assessments under MiFID II, the comprehensible information documents required by the PRIIPs Regulation, and the allocation of liability in cases of fraud under PSD2 each follow the same underlying logic. Protection, in this conception, is not an impediment to the operation of the market: it is the condition under which the market can operate at all.

The Collective Dimension

Where groups of consumers are affected by the same conduct, collective redress mechanisms make possible an enforcement and a restitution that individual proceedings would seldom achieve. Within the European Union, the Representative Actions Directive (Directive (EU) 2020/1828) provides the harmonised framework. Within the United States and Canada, comparable functions are performed by the class-action mechanism, with its considerable comparative experience and its body of procedural refinements which European systems have, in recent years, drawn upon with increasing frequency.

Financial and banking law thus presents itself as a multilayered structure in which contracts, conflict-of-laws rules and doctrinal corrections intersect. It is at once a chessboard, on which strategies are deployed and counter-strategies devised, and a cathedral, in which the architecture of trust is patiently constructed. It is in the equilibrium of these two perspectives that the field reveals its true significance: the law as the framework which renders the market possible, and the market as the field within which the law must continually demonstrate its capacity for protection.

Intellectual Property Law in a Cross-Border Perspective: Protection, Market Function and Fundamental Rights

Creativity and Trust as Pillars

Intellectual property law is at once an engine of innovation and a mirror in which the tensions of the market are reflected. It protects trade marks, designs and creative works, yet it also raises questions of a fundamental character: how far may exclusivity properly extend, at what point does protection pass over into monopolisation, and in what relation do intellectual rights stand to the free movement of goods and services, to competition law and to fundamental rights?

In a globalised context, intellectual property law is more than a national instrument of private law. It is a multilayered architecture which extends from the national codifications and courts, through European harmonisation and supranational institutions, to international conventions and instruments of soft law.

1. The Substantive Domain: Rights, Registrations and Enforcement

At the foundation lie the classical rights. Within the European Union, trade marks are protected by the EU Trade Mark Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2017/1001), designs by the Community Design Regulation (Regulation (EC) 6/2002), and creative works by the Information Society Directive (Directive 2001/29/EC) and, more recently, by the Directive on Copyright in the Digital Single Market (Directive (EU) 2019/790). In Belgium, these rights are anchored in Book XI of the Code of Economic Law and in the Copyright Act of 1994; in Spain, in the Trade Mark Act (Ley 17/2001, as reformed in 2018), in the Intellectual Property Act (the consolidated text of 1996, as reformed in 2019) and in the implementing instruments concerning designs.

Beyond the European frame, intellectual property is governed by the international conventions to which most jurisdictions are parties: the Paris Convention of 1883, the Berne Convention of 1886, the WIPO Copyright Treaty of 1996, the Madrid System for the international registration of marks, the Hague System for the international registration of industrial designs, the Patent Cooperation Treaty, and the TRIPS Agreement of 1994 administered by the World Trade Organization. Within the United States, the field is structured by the Lanham Act in respect of trade marks, by Title 17 of the United States Code in respect of copyright, and by Title 35 in respect of patents and design patents, with enforcement entrusted to the federal courts and to the United States Patent and Trademark Office and the United States Copyright Office. Within Canada, the corresponding instruments are the Trademarks Act, the Copyright Act and the Industrial Design Act, supplemented by the work of the Canadian Intellectual Property Office.

Protection, however, constitutes only the first layer. Of equal importance are the procedures conducted before the EUIPO, the Benelux Office for Intellectual Property and the Spanish OEPM, together with their North-American counterparts. These institutions function as the gatekeepers of registration, but their decisions acquire their full meaning only when courts, in opposition and enforcement proceedings, draw the contours of the rights in concrete cases.

2. The Territorial Dimension: Fragmentation and Coordination

Although European harmonisation has made considerable progress, territorial fragmentation remains a feature of the field. A trade mark may enjoy Union-wide protection while existing in parallel as a national mark; a design registered in Madrid may come into conflict with a Community design registered in Alicante. The transatlantic dimension introduces a further layer of complexity, since registration in the European Union confers no rights in the United States or in Canada, where the territorial principle continues to apply with full force.

Cross-border enforcement renders the underlying tensions particularly acute. The Brussels Ia Regulation determines the jurisdiction of the European courts, but differences in interpretation give rise to divergent outcomes. The online environment compounds the difficulty: a domain name accessible from any point on the globe is, at the same time, assessed differently in each national legal order. The law thus moves continuously between territorial delimitation and transnational spill-over, an oscillation reflected within North America in the rich case-law of the federal courts of the United States on extraterritorial reach under the Lanham Act, and within Canada in the analyses of the Supreme Court in cases such as Equustek concerning the international scope of injunctive relief.

3. The Doctrinal Dimension: Fundamental Rights and Correction

The protection of intellectual property cannot be considered in isolation from the other fundamental values of the legal order. The European Convention on Human Rights and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union recognise intellectual property as a form of property protected by Article 1 of the First Protocol to the Convention and by Article 17(2) of the Charter, while at the same time providing for correction through the freedom of expression (Article 10 of the Convention; Article 11 of the Charter) and the freedom to conduct a business (Article 16 of the Charter).

The case-law illustrates this field of tension. In Ashby Donald and Others v. France (European Court of Human Rights, 2013), copyright came into collision with freedom of expression in the context of fashion photography. In Anheuser-Busch Inc. v. Portugal (European Court of Human Rights, 2007), trade-mark rights were expressly placed within the scope of the property guarantee of the Convention. The Court of Justice of the European Union has, in successive judgments — Arsenal Football Club (Case C-206/01), Google France (Joined Cases C-236/08 to C-238/08), Cofemel (Case C-683/17) and SkyKick (Case C-371/18) — drawn and redrawn the boundaries of the field, addressing in turn the legitimate use of a trade mark, the proper scope of copyright protection, and the consequences of bad-faith trade mark applications. Within the United States, the Supreme Court has performed an analogous corrective function, most notably in Matal v. Tam (2017) and Iancu v. Brunetti (2019) on the relationship between trade-mark registration and the First Amendment, in Eldred v. Ashcroft (2003) on the constitutional limits of copyright, and in Google LLC v. Oracle America, Inc. (2021) on the doctrine of fair use in the context of software.

Taken together, this jurisprudence demonstrates that intellectual property law is continuously recalibrated within the field of tension between exclusivity and openness, and between protection and the proper functioning of the market.

4. Challenges in Practice

A number of contemporary developments place existing frameworks under pressure.

Digital markets. Domain names and online platforms operate on a global scale, while enforcement remains nationally fragmented. Parallel imports and online counterfeiting frequently elude classical procedures, and require the deployment of more recent instruments such as the Digital Services Act (Regulation (EU) 2022/2065).

Concurrence with adjacent fields. Intellectual property law intersects regularly with competition law, in particular in cases concerning the abuse of a dominant position, and with consumer law, in particular in respect of transparency obligations relating to digital content.

Soft law and international coordination. The Enforcement Directive (Directive 2004/48/EC) reinforces the available civil remedies, but the cross-border reality of the field requires further coordination through the World Intellectual Property Organization, the TRIPS framework, and instruments of soft law such as the UNIDROIT Principles and the Draft Common Frame of Reference. The negotiation of further multilateral arrangements concerning artificial intelligence and intellectual property, presently at an early stage, indicates the direction of future convergence.

5. Practical Perspectives

The application of intellectual property law manifests itself in a range of recurrent scenarios. A Belgian undertaking that registers a trade mark with the EUIPO finds itself confronted with an opposition procedure in Spain. A Spanish start-up that wishes to protect a design at the international level must take into account both the Community Design Regulation and, in respect of the United States market, the regime of design patents administered by the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Disputes concerning online reputation, in which trade names collide with domain-name registrations, are resolved through the interplay of arbitration mechanisms — most prominently the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy administered under the auspices of WIPO — and proceedings before the national courts. Counterfeit products that cross the European frontier through parallel-import channels and that escape customs control raise enforcement questions to which neither European nor North-American authorities can respond in isolation.

Each of these scenarios illustrates the manner in which the law is required to maintain a continuous balance between the protection of innovation and the openness of the market.

Intellectual property law in a cross-border perspective is, at one and the same time, a cathedral and a chessboard. It is a cathedral of layers — national codifications, European regulations, international conventions, North-American statutes and constitutional safeguards, and the fundamental rights which together form its vault. It is a chessboard of moves — judges, undertakings and consumers who take strategic positions, anticipate one another and correct one another's choices.

The dimensions of the field — the substantive (rights and contracts), the territorial (jurisdiction and applicable law), and the doctrinal (fundamental rights and correction) — intersect continuously. The structure is never fully completed; the tensions endure. It is precisely in this incompleteness, however, that the vitality of the discipline is to be observed: it is a living system, which seeks, in each generation, a renewed equilibrium between protection and freedom, between creativity and the proper functioning of the market.

Peeters Law – Cross-Border Private International Law and Multijurisdictional Structuring

North-American Citizens Relocating to the European Union

Citizens of the United States and Canada contemplating long-term residence within the European Union must navigate a plurality of national immigration regimes, each of which operates within the broader framework of Union free movement law and the conflict-of-laws rules of private international law. The granting of visas and residence permits remains the exclusive competence of the national immigration authorities and of counsel admitted to practice before them.

Within these limits, Peeters Law is in a position to assist clients in the visa and residence-permit context, albeit in a circumscribed and indirect manner. The firm does not itself conduct the procedural representation before the immigration authorities. It does, however, contribute to the preparation of such proceedings through the legal analysis of the client's overall situation, the assessment of the available residence routes, the structuring of the underlying private-law arrangements, and, where appropriate, the coordination of the file with a trusted confrère specialised in immigration law, with whom the firm maintains an established professional collaboration. Procedural representation as such is undertaken by that cooperating counsel. This division of competences is intended to ensure that each phase of the relocation is addressed by the practitioner most appropriately qualified for it, and that the substantive private-law dimensions of the relocation are treated in parallel with, rather than subordinated to, the immigration procedure.

The Penteract Methodology

Central to the firm's approach is the Penteract Methodology, an analytical framework developed for the systematic examination of complex transboundary legal questions. The methodology is designated by reference to the penteract, being the five-dimensional analogue of the tesseract, and proceeds from the premise that legal problems of an international character cannot adequately be resolved as isolated issues within a single national legal order, but require coordinated examination across five interdependent dimensions.

The territorial dimension comprises the identification of jurisdiction, the determination of the applicable law and the coordination of the legal orders concerned, having regard in particular to the conflict-of-laws rules under Regulations Rome I, Rome II and Brussels Ia, and under the Succession Regulation (EU) 650/2012. The substantive dimension consists in the qualification of the matter and in the mapping of the pertinent fields of law, whether contractual, proprietary, successory, familial or corporate. The linguistic and cultural dimension seeks to ensure the precise interpretation of legal concepts within their original linguistic and cultural matrix, with due regard for the semantic divergences subsisting between the common-law and civil-law traditions. The normative dimension entails an evaluation of the matter against fundamental rights, the general principles of law, considerations of public policy (ordre public) and the hierarchy of norms. The strategic dimension is concerned with the formulation of an appropriate procedural and substantive positioning of the client, including the assessment of risk and the articulation of long-term patrimonial and personal objectives.

Where the complexity of the matter so requires, the analysis may be extended by a sixth structural layer, denoting those boundary conditions that cannot be wholly resolved within the five-dimensional model, and by a seventh reflexive layer comprising a critical review of the analytical process itself. The methodology is formally denoted as P(T, M, N, C, S) and is employed within the firm both as a client-facing instrument of legal reasoning and as an internal discipline governing the structured analysis of cross-border questions. It is offered as one analytical tool among others, and not as a substitute for the substantive rules of the legal orders concerned.

When applied to residency planning for North-American clients, the methodology is intended to ensure that the choice of residence route in Belgium, Spain or Portugal is not considered in isolation, but is examined in connection with the broader personal, familial and patrimonial situation of the client. A decision to acquire Spanish real property in conjunction with the Non-Lucrative Visa route, for instance, is analysed concurrently for its territorial implications (the Spanish lex rei sitae as against the Belgian or U.S. rules of succession), its substantive consequences in property and tax law, the linguistic nuances of the notarial instrument, its compatibility with the fundamental rights recognised within the Union, and the strategic implications for estate planning, including any concomitant difficulties.

The exposition that follows reflects the principal long-stay residence routes available in Belgium, Spain and Portugal as of April 2026. The financial thresholds set out below are based on the most recent official indices known to the firm at the time of writing and remain subject to annual revision. They are provided for general orientation; verification in the individual case is indispensable.

Belgium

Non-EU and non-EEA nationals seeking residence in Belgium for a period exceeding ninety days are, as a rule, required to obtain a national long-stay visa (Type D) prior to entry, followed by registration in the population register of the competent municipality.

The principal residence categories include employment-based authorisation under the Single Permit procedure; self-employment under the Professional Card regime, which falls within regional competence; business establishment and corporate residence routes; residence on the basis of sufficient personal financial means, corresponding to the status of financially independent person or annuitant pursuant to Articles 9 and 9bis of the Law of 15 December 1980 on access to the territory, stay, establishment and removal of aliens; and residence on grounds of family reunification or for academic and research purposes.

Peeters Law assists in the structuring of Belgian corporate vehicles, the analysis of directors' liability, the coordination of cross-border taxation and the resolution of applicable-law questions under the Belgian Code of Private International Law of 16 July 2004.

Spain

Following the abolition of the investor residence regime under Law 14/2013 (the former Golden Visa programme), with effect from 3 April 2025, the principal long-stay options available to non-EU nationals are the Digital Nomad Visa (visado de nómada digital) and the Non-Lucrative Visa (visado de residencia no lucrativa).

The Digital Nomad Visa is designed for remote workers employed by, or contracting with, entities established outside Spain. The principal applicant must, in principle, demonstrate stable gross monthly income equivalent to at least 200 percent of the national minimum interprofessional wage (SMI), a threshold which, as of 2026, stands at approximately 2,850 euro per month. Incremental thresholds apply in respect of accompanying family members, namely 75 percent of the SMI for the first dependent and 25 percent for each subsequent dependent.

The Non-Lucrative Visa is intended for financially independent persons who do not intend to pursue gainful activity within Spain. The principal applicant must demonstrate sufficient resources corresponding to 400 percent of the Public Multiple Effects Income Indicator (IPREM), which for 2026 amounts to approximately 28,800 euro per annum, supplemented by 100 percent of IPREM (7,200 euro per annum) for each accompanying family member.

Peeters Law has developed particular experience in Spanish real-property law, including propiedad horizontal, usufruct and the lease regime under the Ley de Arrendamientos Urbanos; in succession law, including the rules of forced heirship (la legítima) under the Código Civil; in international family law; and in the coordination of social security regimes, in particular as between the autónomo and asalariado statuses. These domains intersect frequently with residency planning where clients acquire or retain assets situated within Spanish territory.

Portugal

Portugal offers a number of residence pathways for non-EU nationals. The Golden Visa (Autorização de Residência para Investimento) programme remains in force, although the real-estate investment route has been discontinued. The qualifying investment options presently comprise a contribution of 500,000 euro to approved regulated investment funds, with at least 60 percent allocated to Portuguese entities, as well as cultural or scientific contributions and job-creating business investments.

Complementary routes include the D7 Visa, for recipients of passive income, with a minimum requirement of approximately 920 euro per month for the principal applicant in 2026, and the Digital Nomad Visa.

Physical presence requirements vary considerably as between the available routes. The Golden Visa imposes only minimal annual stays, typically seven days in the first year and fourteen days in each subsequent two-year period, whereas the other permits require substantially more extensive residence. Following five years of lawful residence, eligible holders may, subject to the applicable conditions, apply for permanent residence and, in due course, for Portuguese citizenship.

Peeters Law assists clients in the cross-border coordination of Portuguese assets alongside Belgian or Spanish holdings, with particular regard to succession planning and to the avoidance of double taxation.

The Complementary Role of Peeters Law

The contribution of Peeters Law lies in the legal structuring of the private-law consequences attendant upon international relocation, undertaken, where the matter so requires, in cooperation with the immigration confrère referred to above. The firm's services in this regard comprise, in particular, the determination of the applicable law and of jurisdiction under the relevant Union regulations (Rome I, Rome II, Brussels Ia, and Succession Regulation (EU) 650/2012) and under the pertinent national rules of private international law; the acquisition, registration and ongoing management of real property, with specific reference to the Spanish regimes of propiedad horizontal and urban lease; international estate planning, the mitigation of forced-heirship conflicts and the coordination of cross-border succession; the treatment of family-law matters, including matrimonial property regimes, parental responsibility and maintenance; and the formation, governance and liability analysis of companies operating in multi-jurisdictional contexts.

In the conduct of these services, the firm endeavours to apply the Penteract Methodology with the appropriate degree of analytical rigour, while remaining mindful of the limits of any analytical model and of the primacy, in each case, of the substantive rules of the legal orders concerned.

Next Steps

Prospective clients are invited to arrange a confidential initial consultation. Consultations are conducted in English, Spanish, Dutch, French or German, and may be held in person or by remote means.