Mutual trust: in search of the future of European Union private international law

Mutual trust has become one of the central buzzwords of the EU in its search of the future of European Union private international law. The following text unfolds possible meanings and functions of the omnipresent but quite opaque notion of mutual trust in European policy-making. The potential role of mutual trust in private international law in general will briefly be considered. Then the law of the European Union will be analysed, first on the level of primary law (what to trust in). Secondly the functioning of the fundamental freedoms and their structural repercussions on European choice of law thinking will be considered insofar as it revolves around a mutual "recognition" of legal relationships. On the level of secondary law the normative system of judicial co-operation in civil matters will be considered in the light of mutual trust, the operation of that normative system by the Court of Justice of the European Union in recent and telling cases, challenges for this normative system from the European Convention on Human Rights as well as challenges from the Commission's 2014 proposal for reacting to systemic deficiencies in the administration of justice in a Member State. Finally, suggestions will be submitted as to how these challenges could be integrated into the normative system. The last part will sum up insights from the deconstruction of the multifaceted term of "mutual trust".