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SMECC stands for School, Minimum standard, Education, Child-friendly policy and care-Continuum. Imagine SMECC as a flat drawing of a house. The regulatory backstop is the minimum standard in family litigation for competent parenthood – far on the horizon, however, a necessary fundament of human...

Asylum seekers usually do not cross borders with a bag of documents. They have lost their personal belongings or have been confiscated by smugglers. Oral statements are therefore the only proof of origin. ^{(Dutch only)} 

Albert Camus famously wrote that ‘life is the sum of all your choices.’ Private lawyers could not agree more. At the core of private law lies the idea that individuals are allowed to know better than the State.

It took quite a while before the European countries realized and recognized that the influx from asylum-seekers via the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey into the European Union is not just a matter of controlling the outside borders of the Union, but also a humanitarian and human rights issue. Some...

This year we have witnessed an extraordinary and tragic series of events. Hundreds of thousands of migrants have tried to cross the Mediterranean to reach Europe. The UN estimates that over 2,500 people have lost their lives in the process. In the last few weeks, the focus has shifted to the EU’s...

The European Commission, on behalf of the European Union (EU), monitors and checks on the transposition of EU legislation by Member States. Member States often have to report on the steps they have taken to comply with specific EU legislation and the Commission even occasionally initiates...

In a short memo, published on 22 March, the Dutch Liberal Party (VVD) expressed its view on how to handle the increasing number of asylum claims in the Netherlands, and more broadly in the EU, as well as the continuously tragic events concerning refugees that occur at the external borders of the EU...

Succession Regulation - a European Union instrument which primary aim it is to offer a choice of law to accommodate EU Citizens in intra-Union succession cases, whereby Member States are given a set of tools to circumvent the main aspects of its applicationa European Union instrument which primary...