Team of FAMIMOVE 3.0 have had the opportunity to give a lecture about the project and discuss the achievements of FAMIMOVE 2.0 on which the current project tasks are based. The team has got an independent session on the 9th of September 2026, the first day of the 19th World Conference of the International Society of Family Law (ISFL) at Pîrî Reis University in Istanbul. Prof. Dr. Orsolya Szeibert as the moderator of the session welcomed the participants and explained that, although all three speakers came from partner universities involved in the project, they were not reporting on national regulations, but rather shedding light on some of the project’s fundamental issues from various perspectives.

The FAMIMOVE 3.0 panel continued with an introduction to the project presented by Dr. Mayela Celis Aguilar. After providing general information about the project and the legal framework, she briefly mentioned the accomplishments made under FAMIMOVE 2.0, stressing the continuing nature of both projects and the consolidation of the existing networks of experts. Subsequently, she addressed the different activities to be carried out under FAMIMOVE 3.0. In particular, she described the three transnational subprojects: portability of civil status documents (with a focus on statelessness and the age of the child), the interaction between international child abduction and migration law and finally, the protection of Ukrainian children in the EU. She further elaborated on the aim of the transnational subprojects and their background, as well as provided examples. Importantly, an open-access book will be published before the end of the project.

A groundbreaking aspect of the project is that Ukrainian children, who moved to the EU after 24 February 2022, will have the opportunity of expressing their views, which will be given due weight, by way of a survey. Dr. Mayela Celis Aguilar stressed the children’s rights framework under the CRC in this regard (incl. General Comment No 12). She noted that one may argue that FAMIMOVE 3.0 will go even farther. This project will put together an Advisory Group of Ukrainian children to develop the survey questionnaire, so that Ukrainian children are involved in the research related to this task. Further details were given as to the practicalities on how this will be put in place to interview at least 50 Ukrainian children in 6 EU MS.

Dr. Leontine Bruijnen was the second speaker to give a presentation about the protection of unaccompanied minors which was addressed in FAMIMOVE 2.0 and will remain a key focus of FAMIMOVE 3.0. In her presentation, she examined who can be considered an unaccompanied minor under the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum. She demonstrated that the application of the Pact raises several questions from a private international law perspective.

The instruments forming part of the Pact define a minor as ‘a third-country national or stateless person below the age of 18 years’. A refugee or migrant child can prove their age by providing documents in which their age is stated or can be inferred, such as a birth certificate. The recognition of such foreign documents in the host Member State is governed by private international law. FAMIMOVE 2.0 revealed that, in practice, the recognition of foreign documents establishing a person’s age can be challenging. For example, recognition may be difficult if a child has fled a conflict zone and is unable to provide any (authentic) documents. FAMIMOVE 2.0 also showed that approaches to age assessment vary across EU Member States. Article 25 of the Asylum Procedure Regulation, introduced as part of the Pact, appears to address this issue by providing guidelines on how a child’s age can be determined, including through a multidisciplinary assessment.

Another question discussed by Leontine Bruijnen was how to determine whether a child is unaccompanied. More specifically, she examined how the 1996 Hague Child Protection Convention and the Brussels IIter Regulation can be used to establish or recognise child protection measures concerning an unaccompanied minor. Her presentation highlighted how private international law and the EU Pact on Migration and Asylum may also interact in this context.

The presentation of Orsolya Szeibert focused on one of the key issues of both FAMIMOVE 2.0 and that of 3.0: ensuring that the best interests of the child were upheld within the framework of the project. She emphasised that the volume produced as a result of the FAMIMOVE 2.0 project, ‘Children in Migration and International Family Law’ which is available via open access, also referred to the primacy of the child’s best interests in its subtitle, ’The Child’s Best Interests Principle at the Interface of Migration Law and Family Law’. She outlined the key findings from research on international jurisdiction under Brussels IIter Regulation, case-law of CJEU regarding third-country nationals and age assessment in migration law which have enriched the international literature and, at the same time, form the basis for the current project’s ongoing research.  

The previous project centred on three further key topics relevant to children’s rights, namely guardianship, kafalah and early marriage. These must be assessed in accordance with the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), taking into account the interpretative framework of the best interests of the child as defined under children’s rights law, a task made more difficult by linguistic and translation discrepancies in the wording of the CRC.  The project’s research has highlighted that it is particularly difficult to determine the best interests of the child in cross-border situations, given the interplay of private international law and the various relevant international instruments. In conclusion, the speaker highlighted the diversity of the areas of law covered by the project, the complexity of the underlying issues, and the fact that all of these must be assessed in the requirements of the rights of the child such as the voice of the child and the child’s protection.

The session provided an opportunity for the audience to ask questions and discuss some fundamental issues with the speakers.