Descriptive sections in comparative studies can easily become tedious. Yet transparency dictates not making reference to the provisions of domestic and EU law only in piecemeal fashion later on, where the brunt of references is relegated to the“low rumble of the footnote”. I will therefore try to navigate Scylla and Charybdis by first giving a brief overview of the private international law of each member state and of the EU itself, so that later references do not point to a vacuum.

Incidentally: the decision for not having fewer references, and thus slimmer footnotes, in the first place is based on the idea that not all sources compiled for this book will be available everywhere. More references for the same point increase the probability that every reader has access to at least some of the sources relied upon for my observations.

DOMESTIC PRIVATE INTERNATIONAL LAW

SCOPE OF THE OVERVIEW

In accordance with the overall approach of this book, the scope does not cover the legal, constitutional, or political order of the member states as a whole. Rather, it focuses on the following issues:

Note that, in the interest of readability, I will use inverted commas as sparingly as possible outside of direct quotations (of which there will be quite a few).