Cour de cassation 1ère Chambre civile; 2022-09-21; 1re Civ., 21 septembre 2022, pourvoi n° 19-15.438
Decision by national courts in the field of European Union law — ECLI:FR:CCASS:2022:C100668
Date: 2022-09-21
Subject matter: Judicial cooperation in civil matters
Origin: France

82022FR0921(51)_ENG_SUMJURE
JURE summary
JURE summary
This case, brought before the Cour de Cassation (hereinafter ‘the Supreme Court’) concerned the succession of a Frenchman who owned assets located in France, and whose habitual residence, at the time of his death, was outside the European Union.
The children of the deceased man (hereinafter ‘the plaintiffs’) sued his widow (hereinafter ‘the defendant’) before a French judge. Claiming that the habitual residence of their father at the time of his death was in France, they invoked Article 4 of Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 (hereinafter ‘the Succession Regulation’) (1), which provides that ‘[the] courts of the Member State in which the deceased had his habitual residence at the time of death shall have jurisdiction to rule on the succession as a whole’.
The case was brought before the cour d’appel de Versailles (hereinafter ‘the Court of Appeal’), which held that the French courts had no jurisdiction because the habitual residence of the deceased, at the time of his death, was in the United Kingdom.
The plaintiffs appealed to the Supreme Court. They argued that the Court of Appeal should have examined of its own motion whether it had a subsidiary jurisdiction under Article 10(1)(a) of the Succession Regulation, which provides that ‘[where] the habitual residence of the deceased at the time of death is not located in a Member State, the courts of a Member State in which assets of the estate are located shall nevertheless have jurisdiction to rule on the succession as a whole in so far as the deceased had the nationality of that Member State at the time of death’.
The Supreme Court sought a preliminary ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter ‘the CJEU’) about the interpretation of this article.
The CJEU answered (Case C-645/20) (2) that it should be interpreted ‘as meaning that a court of a Member State must raise of its own motion its jurisdiction under the rule of subsidiary jurisdiction referred to in that provision where, having been seised on the basis of the rule of general jurisdiction established in Article 4 of that regulation, it finds that it has no jurisdiction under that latter provision’.
As the Court of Appeal did not raise its jurisdiction of its own motion, its judgment was set aside.
(1) Regulation (EU) No 650/2012 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 4 July 2012 on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and acceptance and enforcement of authentic instruments in matters of succession and on the creation of a European Certificate of Succession.
(2) Judgment of the Court of Justice of 7 April 2022, V A and Z A, C-645/20, ECLI:EU:C:2022:267, paragraph 47.