Succession Contracts for Family Firms in Italy and Albania. A European Private International Law Approach

In recent decades there has been an increase in longevity as well as a higher interest in the intergeneration of business transfer within a family. As a result, both European and national legislatures have been focusing on allowing this type of transfer before death. While the EU legislature stimulated this approach through the Commission Recommendation of 7 Decem ber 1994 on the transfer of small and medium-sized enterprises (Rec. 94/1069/EC), the Italian legislature fulfilled it only in 2006. Unfortunately, Albania does not provide any exception to the absolute invalidation of succession contracts. This paper does not aim to provide an extensive analysis of the various forms of succession of family firms in these two countries. This scientific contribution rather applies a legal comparison and a case-law study to inves tigate the impact of EU law on the national legislation by only focusing on the application of European private international law perspective. The contribution underlines the different approaches between these two countries since Italy has harmonized its own legislation with the EU soft-law and it has also ratified the Convention on the Law Applicable to Trusts and their Recognition of 1 July 1985. On the contrary, Albania has not ratified this international treaty, and its legislation is not aligned with the Rec. 94/1069/EC.