European Divorce and Inheritance Laws?

It’s not so much the proposal for them that worries me, not even the problem of whose very different laws that would get to be the harmonised code, no, it’s the failure in the reporting on this idea of pan-European divorce and inheritance laws:

An optional EU code on inheritance could stop the heirs to multi-national estates squabbling over which of Europe’s very different national laws would take precedence, said Franco Frattini, the EC commission vice-president for justice, freedom and security.

Europe’s differing national codes of inheritance and marital property are some of the oldest and most sensitive areas of law on the statute books, with each nation jealously guarding such hallowed principles as primogeniture.

Even leaving aside the absurdity of people being allowed to sign up to a contract that removes them from the strictures of the national law (hey, where do I do that to give me Monaco style taxation while living in the UK?) it isn’t the principle of primogeniture which is at issue at all. While it is often practised in the UK for example, there is nothing in law that says one must, the division of assets after death is entirely in the hands of the person writing the will. Those countries with the Napoleonic Code (to my certain knowledge France and Portugal, perhaps Spain and Italy as well) insist that one cannot leave property as one wishes, but that all children have an equal share.

The fight will not be about the preservation of primogeniture at all, it will be about whether the equal division of assets will be enforced or left to personal choice.

Thinking about this a little further, the DG of that department responsible commented on something else on this blog once.  I’ll drop him a line and see if we can get some  clarification of this issue. Don’t hold your breath for an answer.

Udate: Have received back info from the Belly of the Beast as follows:

You might also find my boss's site illuminating. It's not a blog but....

I see you wrote "I'll drop him a line and see if we can get some
clarification of this issue. Don't hold your breath for an answer."

Well they can all breathe again. This is in fact a very open bureaucracy,
willing to explain what it's doing and why.

If you're ever in Brussels, I'd be happy to buy you a drink.

Which is very nice of him, that makes two people in Brussels. Doing as he suggests, and looking at that site, I get to this, the Green Paper on the subject. The most worrying clause to me looks like 2.5 :
2.5. Reserved portion of estate
The legal systems of all the Member States protect the near relatives of a deceased person
who tries to disinherit them. The protection commonly takes the form of a reserved portion of
the estate but the mechanism is not recognised everywhere in the European Union.
Question 10: Should the application of the reserved portion of the estate be maintained
where the law designated by the conflict rule does not recognise the principle or defines its
scope differently? If so, how?
That really does look to me as if they are asking, should the Napoleonic system of splitting the estate amongst the children be the European norm, or should the Anglo one of leaving it to whoever you wish in your will be the norm?
There’s also a French only annexe which for all my linguistic skills probably contains the detailed rules on how to make sure that the Anglo freedoms are not allowed to spread.