Abstract: The law no. 361/2007 transposes Council Decision 2003/93/EC of 19 December 2002 authorising the Member States, in the interest of the Community, to sign the 1996 Hague Convention on jurisdiction, applicable law, recognition, enforcement and cooperation in respect of parental responsibility and measures for the protection of children. The scope of the Convention includes parental rights and responsibilities awarded either to the parents, or to the guardians or other legal representatives of the child, the right of custody and the right of access to the child, guardianship, curatorship and analogous institutions, as well as the necessary protection and placement measures for the achievement of the child’s best interest in what regards both the person and the property of the child. The Convention also establishes which contracting states and which judicial or administrative authorities there of have jurisdiction at an international level. The adoption of the law no. 361/2007 aims at the completion of the necessary legal framework for the cooperation between member states in the matter of parental responsibility and child protection, a vital desideratum in the context of Romania’s membership of the European Union. At the centre of such laws lies the principle of promoting the best interest of the child and that of observing the fundamental rights of the child in relation to human rights, as resulted from the international documents in the field, i.e. the conventions and treaties to which Romania is signatory, in particular the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by Law no. 18/1990, republished. The law-making process thus aims at protecting the rights of all children on an equal basis, not only of children covered by a form of state protection due to the risk situations they were subject to. Such international instruments are designed to contribute to the delineation of the application scope of various concurrent legislations, by clearly establishing unanimously accepted principles meant to help uniformly solve the conflicts that may arise in any matter of private law.

Key-words: parental responsibility, child protection measures, jurisdiction, applicable law.