EU CIVIL PROCEDURE AFTER THE LISBON TREATY

With the Lisbon Treaty, a new page was opened in the development of EU civil procedure. This is so because тhe Lisbon Treaty has introduced Article 81 (ex-Article 65 EC) as a separate Chapter 3 of Title V on an Area of Freedom, Security, and Justice. With this, civil justice cooperation has gained an autonomous character and become distinct sub-area of the EU policy on Freedom, Security, and Justice.1 More importantly, the approximation of Member States’ civil procedural rules, provided for in Article 81 of the Lisbon Treaty, has gained a central role in the establishment and proper functioning of this Area and the EU in general. Precisely because of this, the subject of analysis of this paper is the new trend in the development of the civil procedure of the EU after the Lisbon Treaty, the advantages that this trend offers versus the old regime in EU and the future directions of development of the civil procedural law of the EU.