European Union Property Law: From Fragments to a System

The European acquis communautaire in the field of property law is to a large extent still unexplored. This study has aimed to shine a light on EU property law. It provides an overview of the existing acquis communautaire in property law, and presents a proposal for the future development of this field of law. It deals with the influence of the EU’s four freedoms - of goods, persons, services and capital - on national property law and discusses whether or not the EU would have the competence to actively create property law, and the extent to which it has already done so. By conducting an extensive search on the basis of some thirty key property law terms, the author has been able to uncover not just the handful of Directives and Regulations that touch upon property law and are relatively well-known, but also hundreds of EU legislative measures that make use of property law concepts, but leave them mostly undefined. The resulting picture of EU property law is a fragmented one. In order to develop this field of law more consistently and coherently, the author has proposed a framework for future EU property law, focusing on both form and content. The essence of this framework is the development of three European-autonomous property rights, functioning within a European set of property law rules.