Hongaars voorzitterschap tekent namens EU Haags verdrag over kinderhulp (en)

On 6 April 2011, in The Hague, Minister for Public Administration and Justice, Tibor Navracsics, on behalf of the European Union, signed the Hague Convention of 23 November 2007 on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance.

The EU will join the Convention in two steps: the signing amounts for a declaration of intention to accede the Convention in the near future. After each Member State has submitted its statement concerning the Convention, the EU will conclude it. The EU’s accession to the Convention will definitely encourage other states as well, since this will allow them to enter into a contractual relation with 26 EU Member States at the same time. (The Convention has not yet taken effect, so far it has been signed by the United States, Norway, Ukraine and Burkina Faso. The US Senate has already authorised the accession, and Canada is preparing to do so).

International cooperation aimed at the recovery of child support and family maintenance, has a history of over 50 years. The Convention enhances this cooperation as it expands the scope of cooperation, simplifies processes, and increases their efficiency. Signatory states provide a wider scope of services to persons eligible for support, and undertake to proceed ‘free of charge’, in cases aimed at recovering child support abroad. (In Hungary, child support-related cases are traditionally ‘free of charge’, but in several other states, primarily in West Europe, the applicant may receive cost exemption only if his or her income or financial conditions justify it. This increases the administrative burden and slows down the process. When elaborating on the Convention, these states undertook to “automatically,” grant cost exemption for the entitled parties in child maintenance cases.

Another innovation of the Convention is that the aid provided by the central authorities of signatory states, may be requested not only by eligible persons, but also by debtors, if changes in the circumstances of the case, justify the reduction or termination of the support. The Convention also enables state agencies, which have prepaid the support in lieu of the defaulting debtor, to request the recovery of the support abroad. In order to make cooperation more efficient, the Convention introduces obligatory and recommended forms, and prescribes the disclosure of important information regarding child maintenance cases, on the website of The Hague Conference on Private International Law.

Signatory states are responsible to set and operate a Central Authority, which is capable of processing the petitions quickly, and acting efficiently to protect applicants. The Hungarian central authority will be the Ministry of Public Administration and Justice (more specifically, the Department of Justice Cooperation and Private International Law).

The EU has been involved in the development of the Convention from the beginning, and has incorporated several provisions from the Convention into Council Regulation 4/2009/EC, on cooperation in matters relating to maintenance obligations. Therefore, in this respect the Convention supplements and the regulation will be applied to maintenance-related matters affecting states outside the EU. The Convention was signed by the EU, and later, will be concluded by the EU; actions of the Union will become obligatory for Member States.