The legal framework created to harmonise the rules governing cross-border child protection rests mainly on three instruments. Within the EU, child protection is primarily ensured by the Brussels IIter Regulation, which replaced the Brussels IIa Regulation as of 1 August 2022. In addition to the Regulation, all EU Member States have ratified the Hague Convention on Child Abduction 1980, and the Hague Convention on the Protection of Children 1996. All of these instruments base the jurisdiction to issue protective measures on the habitual residence of the child. They also establish a system of central authorities (CAs), who operate on the national level and are responsible for sharing good practice and information on national laws and practices and cooperating in cross-border cases. In Finland, the CA is the Ministry of Justice. The contact point function of the CAs means that research into the actual cases of the CA can offer invaluable information as to how cross-border child protection operates in practice. It can also indicate factors enhancing or precluding effective protection of children in transnational situations. This dataset is based on detailed notes made of case files from the Finnish Ministry of Justice. It covers cases of child protection in 2012–2020 (n=193) and child abduction in 2016–2018 (n=53). Of the child protection cases, the requesting authority was Finnish in 98 cases and in 95 cases the request came from a foreign CA.

2025