Les fondements du droit international privé européen de la famille

European families are nowadays an undeniable reality. This reality is taken into account through the emergence of a genuine European private international family law, understood as the set of rules of conflict of jurisdictions and conflict of laws provided by the European Union to apply to European family relationships. Given the novelty of the subject and the uncertainty of its constituent concepts, it is necessary to analyse the foundations of European private international family law, in order to be able to better understand it and to enhance its operation. The study of these foundations reveals the need to develop a European private international family law that mobilizes all methods of private international law, effectively articulating them around the central role of the rule of conflict of laws, the real cornerstone of the system. The European Union is currently far from realising such a comprehensive and coherent system. Nonetheless it would be possible to overcome the failure of the current situation through the development of a European private international family law that effectively organises the plurality of national family rights, while ensuring the effectiveness of family duties. The European private international law should therefore incorporate the need to respect the national legal systems and effectively implement this respect through the elaboration of a system of private international law that is conceived around a rule of conflict of laws designed to take account of the inevitable national dimension of family law. The European Union, while offering a private international law respectful of the concept of a pluriel universel, could hence (re-)discover the identity of the pluralistic unity in diversity. Thus, it could gradually let emerge the identity of a genuine European citizen, identifying herself and himself with the diversity of national laws and the harmonious coordination of this diversity, not only in order to protect the fact that each national family law is the result of a democratic process in which citizens directly concerned can actively participate, but especially in order to guarantee that each Member State can continue to defend its national core values in the context of European federalism.