Recueil des cours, Tome 423

"Mutual trust" has become the central justification of the EU to drive its private international law forward - the reason why this Course undertakes to explore the theoretical potential of a trust perspective on private international law. In a first step, the opaque term of trust is deconstructed in an interdisciplinary analysis. The results are connected with fundamentals of private international law. The central finding is that private international law builds on the dichotomy of trust and control: how far should foreign judgments, foreign law and other foreign judicial acts be integrated - "trusted" - within the domestic administration of justice? This question must be answered by each and every legislator and each and every court, in particular by those that strive for economic and complementing judicial integration. Recurring tools of trust management can be identified. How do regional integration communities use and fine-tune these tools for their private international law and what are potential explanations from their history, their economics and their legal cultures? Four communities, selected from different parts of the world, are presented under this perspective, ordered in a series towards growing intensities of mutual trust: the ASEAN, the CEMAC, the MERCOSUR, and the EU. The Course comes to the conclusion that trust is, must, and can be managed and dosed according to the respective conditions and contexts, but no matter where we are: to trust or not to trust - that is the question of private international law, for regional integration communities and beyond.