MEPs back steps to ease foreign child maintenance

The pain of divorce and separation is all too often accompanied by financial and emotional hardship when one parent lives abroad and refuses to provide financial help. With the number of couples of different nationalities increasing the issue of retrieving child maintenance will grow. MEPs agreed 11 February that the EU should ratify an international convention that could make the recovery of maintenance across borders easier.

MEPs backed a report by Jiří Maštálka, a Czech member of the leftist GUE/NGL bloc. He said the "Convention on the International Recovery of Child Support and Other Forms of Family Maintenance" (which forms part of the Hague Convention) is the best way to establish clear legal rules on recovery of maintenance..

"Allows the international recovery of child support"

"The main contribution of this Convention lies in the fact that it now allows the international recovery of child support and other forms of family maintenance in relation to third countries. It brings a solution at the multilateral level, which previously did not exist," Mr Maštálka said.

British Liberal Diana Wallis, who drafted a report on the recuperation of child support last year, said that she has often been contacted by constituents having difficulties getting maintenance payments from somebody in a different country and that "all too often, I have been unable to give a practical and positive answer".

Will add "practical value"

Ms Wallis said, this report will "add practical value at difficult times in people's lives".

Some member states are known to be reluctant to go down this legal route as they would prefer to keep family law on a national level. Family law is different across the 27 member states - for example divorce is not recognised in Malta.