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Ireland opted out when the EU justice ministers cleared the way for new rules that seek to unify divorce laws across different groups of EU countries.
Ireland's government is not joining fourteen other member states in a bid to apply harmonised rules where international couples can choose which country's laws apply on their petition to divorce or separate. However, the core group of European countries are moving forward with the scheme regardless of whether other member states are taking part or not.
"If we were to participate in this, it would mean that we would have to implement foreign divorce laws in our own courts and that’s not something I think we want," Minister for Justice Dermot Ahern said in an interview yesterday after EU ministers met in Luxembourg.
"The fact that we had a referendum and had legislation strictly based on the referendum that the people voted on, I don’t think we can change that unless we have another referendum, obviously."
The proposed unification of rules allows both parties to put in writing which country's divorce laws are applicable to them. This could possibly lower the incidence of "forum shopping" where one spouse pursues a divorce in a court that is more likely to make an advantageous ruling on their case.
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