When this book was first conceived, my aim was to analyse the concept of family employed in a number of different areas of substantive Community law. The thought of writing a book which also included a detailed discussion of the family law of the European Union never entered my head. If it had, I should have thought it would be a very short book indeed. However, in the late 1990s, when carrying out research for an article on the developing concept of family in European Union law, I came across references to family law in discussions regarding the prospects for a European civil code. 1 The deeper I delved,.
