Harmonization of land registry in Europe

An increase in cross-border transactions of immovable property within the European Union puts a demand for easy access to the information of the national land administrations of the member states. The European Union Land Information System (EULIS) project brings together the registrations of eight European jurisdictions in one portal. In this way it provides cross-border access to information about the rights on real estate, using the information in the
computerized databases of the participating land registries. The EULIS project is the first step towards a more transparent system of real estate transactions. The next logical step, from the viewpoint of international accessibility of the information, is that the national land registries within the united Europe will be harmonized or even integrated in one European land registry or administration.
In order to promote cross-border transactions and to facilitate the European mortgage market the authors suggest the introduction of a common way of land registration, in addition to the existing national land registrations: the EuroTitle system. This is a challenging concept, which may bring the required uniformity of land registration in Europe. This approach is in the beginning stages of development and the legal and organisational consequences need to be further explored and developed in order to assess the feasibility of the introduction of such a concept in European land registry.