XI ELRA General Assembly
May 7, 2010 / ELRA Secretariat
The XI ELRA General Assembly took place in Madrid on 7th May under the Spanish Presidency of the European Union and hosted by the Colegio de Registradores de España.
The meeting was attended by representatives of 16 ELRA members from 14 EU Member States. We also welcomed observers from 4 other countries who are not yet ELRA members: Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Italy and Slovakia.
The ELRA Assembly was opened by Ms. Aurora Mejía, Director General of the International Legal Cooperation from the Ministry of Justice, Mr. Alfonso Candau, President and Ms. Almudena del Río, Director of International Relations of the Colegio. ELRA President, Mr. Gabriel Alonso, welcomed all the delegates to the meeting and explained the recent activities carried out by the Association.
One of the main topics of this XI Assembly was the Official Launch of the European Land Registry Network (ELRN), which aims to facilitate the influence of Land Registries upon European civil justice cooperation instruments and to contribute to the strengthening of the European space of freedom security and justice. Mr. Gabriel Alonso introduced the Network as an instrument contributing to the strengthening of these two actions; access to Land Registry information, and access to the land register in order to have it reflect an alteration in the legal status of a property.
The European Land Registry Network will make general information available to the citizens of Europe regarding European land registration systems through a new website. The initial content of this website will be created from the information already held by ELRA from surveys, analyses and questionnaires on legal matters completed by national organizations. In this way the ELRN will extract value from the Association’s activities over the last few years.
Presentations were made by the coordinators of the two ELRA Working Groups on their present and future activities. Mr. Harald Wilsch, coordinator of the Working Group on International Law, introduced the handbook on the Aspects of Debt Enforcement Procedures and Foreclosure in European Land Registry Matters. Mr. Wim Louwman, coordinator of the Working Group on E-Conveyancing, explained the objectives and main work carried out by his Working Group.
ELRA has also continued working on this year’s Annual Publication. The coordinator, Mr. Javier Gómez, introduced the third volume of the publication, which includes articles from the different ELRA Member Associations.
Documents relating to proposed changes in EU legislation were introduced to the Assembly. These were (i) the proposal for a Regulation on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition and enforcement of decisions and authentic instruments in matters of successions and a European Certificate of Inheritance and (ii) the ELRA Contribution to the Green Paper on the review of Council Regulation (EC) Nº 44/2001 on Jurisdiction and the Recognition and Enforcement of Judgements in Civil and Commercial Matters
After the internal matters, ELRA was honored to welcome as a speaker Mr. Paulino Pereira from the General Directorate of Justice and Home Affairs of the European Commission. Mr Pereira’s presentation was about the E-Justice programme.
In the afternoon session, the Assembly focused on the Land Registry Systems in Croatia and Spain, and delegates from these countries made two interesting presentations.
Finally, the President reviewed the outcomes of the meeting, thanked the Spanish hosts for their welcome and all members for their participation, and announced that the next Assembly was scheduled to take place in Brussels in autumn 2010.
