The purpose of private international law is to harmonise the operation of various legal orders in order to achieve the fairest possible resolution of disputes.It applies to disputes between private parties when they are connected with more than one country.
In recent decades, thanks to globalisation and especially within the EU, there has been a great deal of legislative work aimed at unifying the law of the Member States in order to make it easier and fairer to resolve cross-border problems.
It is obvious that when a dispute involving elements of foreignness arises, two issues need to be clearly defined: the locally competent court (domestic or foreign) and the applicable law, i.e. the law to be applied to resolve the dispute (domestic or foreign). For EU Member States, specific rules (Regulations) have been adopted to determine the above issues.
Examples include Brussels Ia on civil and commercial matters, Brussels IIa on matrimonial matters, Regulation 4/2009 on maintenance, Rome I and Rome II on contractual disputes. For these cases, which are usually complex, a specialised lawyer is required.