At least 65 per cent of Maltese believe that the automatic validation of friendly divorce agreements in the EU will be relevant to them or to their relatives in the next 20 years, a recent Eurobarometer study has revealed.
The survey, commissioned by the European Commission, asked EU citizens to voice their opinion on various questions related to international Family Law.
The large majority of EU citizens (87 per cent) said they support an automatic validation of friendly divorce agreements in any other member State but only 33 per cent said this issue will concern them or a relative in the next 20 years.
However, Malta is one of the three EU countries with the majority of the population saying that it will be relevant, along with 57 per cent of Irish respondents and 55 per cent from Cyprus.
Just around a quarter of the people believe that this issue could be relevant to them or relatives in the Czech Republic (25 per cent), Germany and Hungary (24 per cent each), and The Netherlands (20 per cent).
Another 90 per cent of respondents from new members States said that a friendly divorce agreement on the distribution of their belongings should automatically become valid in any other EU member State.
The study revealed that the majority of the overall EU population believes that couples of different nationalities or live in a country different to their nationality who want to have a divorce within the EU, should be able to chose between several options.
The respondents said that people should be able to choose which country’s divorce law should apply – the law of the resident country, or where they used to live, or their country of origin.
However, 10 per cent of Maltese respondents said that people should only be able to choose in which country the divorce proceedings will take place.
Countries like Finland (eight per cent), Sweden (10 per cent), France (10 per cent), UK (10 per cent) and Ireland (11 per cent) also said that people should only be given this option.
According to recent EU statistics, there are an estimated 170,000 divorce each year, representing around 16 per cent of all divorces.
International divorces include a wide variety of cases such as when spouses are of different nationalities, or have the same nationality but live in a member State other than their original country.
According to the study, the majority of the EU population expects the EU to play a major role to facilitate legislation in another member State in the adoption of children from other member States, recognition of civil status certificates, divorce, child custody dealings, and inheritance.
A good majority (76 per cent) of the overall EU population expects the EU to facilitate legislation on adoption of children from different member States.
Another 76 per cent expects the EU play a role to facilitate legislation for recognising civil status certificates – birth certificate, marriage certificate – in another member State.
Two-thirds (67 per cent) of EU citizens expect the EU to facilitate legislation in child custody dealings in another member State and another 63 per cent expect the EU to facilitate inheritance in another member State.
Although only 20 per cent of EU members said that enhancing mechanisms for translation of EU documents should be the EU’s priority, Malta ranked highest with at least 31 per cent of respondents saying that it should be the EU’s main priority.
At least 60 per cent of EU25 citizens said they expect the EU to have an active role in facilitating legislation in divorce in another member State.
However, Malta’s statistics rank lower with only 40 per cent of the respondents saying that they expect the EU to take on such a role.
Similarly, 49 per cent of the respondents in Sweden, and 42 per cent of the respondents in Denmark said the EU is expected to facilitate legislation
When it comes to recognition of family law documents, 38 per cent of the overall EU population said the EU’s priority should be to establish formats for specific documents.
However, while this was highly requested in certain countries such as Germany (46 per cent), Austria (45 per cent) and Slovenia (43 per cent), Malta had the lowest response rate with 22 per cent of the respondents.