Principles of European Trust Law

On Friday, 15 January 1999, an international conference took place on "Principles of European Trust Law" in the Academy Building at The Hague. It was organized by the Business and Law Research Centre and the Faculty of Law of Nijmegen University. The conference discussed Principles of European Trust Law, drawn up by an International Working Group. The Principles build on the work which the Hague Conference undertook during the years 1980-1984 in the context of the preparation of the Convention of 1 July 1985 on the Law Applicable to Trusts and on their Recognition, which is now in force for Australia, Canada, China (Hong Kong Special Administrative Region), Italy, Malta, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and has been signed by Cyprus, France, Luxembourg and the United States. Several experts who participated in the negotiations at The Hague or were later involved in work of the Hague Conference, also contributed to the Principles and the colloquium, including the Reporter on the Trusts Convention Professor A.E. von Overbeck, and Professors Kötz, Waters, Anderson, Hayton, Borrás and González Beilfuss.
At the beginning of the conference, the book "Principles of European Trust Law" was presented to the Secretary General of the Hague Conference, who thanked the Working Group for its initiative and for the thorough work, the vision and the practical sense that were put into the Principles. He also pointed out that experience suggested that the parallel introduction of the Hague Trusts Convention and the trust device in civil law jurisdictions not so far providing for trusts might be more difficult than the successive introduction first of the Convention and then of the trust or a trust-like institution. The book "Principles of European Trust Law", edited by D.J. Hayton, S.C.J.J. Kortmann and H.L.E. Verhagen, is published, as Volume 1 in the series Law of Business and Finance by Kluwer Law International (ISBN 90.411.9726.5), W.E.J. Tjeenk Willink 1999 (ISBN 90.271.5048.6).