The European Notarial Network, known by the acronym ENN (RNE in Romanian), is the working tool through which notaries in the Member States of the European Union help one another whenever a file reaches beyond a single country. It was created and is run by the Council of the Notariats of the European Union (CNUE) with the support of the European Union, and it is free of charge for notaries in the member notariats.
How it works
Each national notariat appoints interlocutors and contact points. A notary who needs information on the law of another Member State, for instance on the formal requirements of a will, on the statutory matrimonial property regime or on the documents required for a property sale, puts the question through the network and receives the answer from a colleague in that State who knows local practice.
Instead of an uncertain exercise in comparative law, the notary handling the file works with verified information supplied by a professional who stands behind it. For the client, that means shorter deadlines and documents that also take effect abroad.
What it offers
Beyond the network of contacts, the ENN portal offers practical tools, kept up to date by the national notariats:
- checklists for successions, family law, real estate law and company law;
- comparative factsheets on the formal requirements for documents and powers of attorney in each Member State;
- explanatory handbooks on the European regulations and observatories on how they are applied nationally;
- links to the thematic portals of the European notariat, among them Successions in Europe, Couples in Europe and the ARERT registers of wills;
- materials on the prevention of money laundering and on mediation.
The fields covered
The content is organised around the areas where cross-border elements arise most often: family law and matrimonial property regimes, successions, the circulation of public documents, real estate law, company law, the prevention of money laundering and mediation. The interface is available in more than 20 languages, Romanian included.
The link with the Romanian notariat
The National Union of Public Notaries of Romania takes part in the ENN through its CNUE membership, held since 1 January 2007, and has representatives in the working group devoted to the network. Romanian public notaries use the network above all in international successions and in family law files with a cross-border element.