The New Private International Law Of Contract Of The European Community

As from 1st April 1991, English courts, along with those of the rest of the United Kingdom and member states of the European Community, are obliged to apply the rules laid down in the EEC's Rome Convention on the Law Applicable to contractual obligations, in respect of international contracts concluded after that date. In the United Kingdom, the Convention is given the force of law by the Contracts (Applicable Law) Act 1990. It is likely that at some time in the not too distant future, national appellate courts of the contracting States will have the power to refer questions of interpretation of the Convention to the European court of Justice in Luxembourg. The book sets out to explain and to construe the new uniform system of rules governing laws applicable to international contracts, in the light of the preexisting English private international law of contract, which itself continues to apply in relation to certain types of transactions.

The idea of national codification is advancing on a global scale in conflict of laws. A large number of legislative projects dealing with codifying and modernizing private international law, both on the national and the supranational level, have been launched in the past few years. Among such recent initiatives, the advances taken by the European and the Japanese legislators are particularly reflecting these developments. On January 1, 2007, the new Japanese 'Act on General Rules for Application of Laws' entered into force replacing the outdated conflict of laws statute of 1898. This major reform finds its parallels in the current efforts of the European Union to create a modern private international law regime for its member states.This volume presents the first comprehensive analysis of the new Japanese private international law available in any western language and contrasts it with corresponding European developments. Most of the contributors from Japan are scholars who were actively involved in and responsible for preparing the new Act. All of them are renowned experts in the field of private international law. Leading European experts in the conflict of laws supplement the Japanese analyses with comparative contributions reflecting the pertinent discussion of parallel endeavours in the EU. To guarantee better understanding, English translations of both the present and the former Japanese statutes have been added.

The Rome I Regulation on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations has unified the conflict of laws rules of the Member States. The influence of the European Union upon Private International Law goes beyond positive harmonisation however. There is a certain tension between European law and PIL. European law is concerned with whether the imposition of a rule constitutes a restriction to the internal market whereas PIL does not seek to neutralise the disadvantages that result from differences between national laws but instead tries to locate the geographical centre of the legal relationship. The present book attempts to identify the methodological disharmony between the two legal disciplines in the regulation of cross border contracts and proposes suggestions to enhance their mutual understanding.

EU Private Law and the CISG examines selected EU directives in the field of private law and their effects on the national private law systems of several EU Member States and discusses certain specific concepts of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) in light of the CISG’s recent fortieth anniversary. The most prominent influence of EU law on national private law systems is in the area of the law of obligations, thus the book focuses on several EU private law directives that cover the issues belonging to contract and tort law, as interpreted in the case law of the Court of Justice of the EU. EU private law concepts need to be interpreted autonomously and uniformly rather than through the lens of national private law systems. The same is true for the CISG which has not only been one of the most successful instruments of the international trade law unification but had also influenced both the EU private law and domestic laws. In Part I, focused on the EU private law and its effects for national laws, chapters examine the recent Digital Content and Services Directive and its likely impact on the contract law of the UK and Ireland, the role aggressive commercial practices play in EU banking and credit legislation, the applicability of the EU private international law rules to collective redress, the unfair contract terms regime of the Late Payment Directive and its transposition into Croatian law, the implementation of the Commercial Agency Directive in Denmark, Estonia and Germany, and disgorgement of profits as remedy provided in the Trade Secrets Directive. In Part II, dealing with selected CISG issues, chapters discuss the autonomous interpretation of CISG’s concept of sale by auction and its notion of intellectual property, as well as the CISG’s principle of freedom of form and the possibility for reservations with the effect of its exclusion. The book will be of interest to legal scholars in the field of EU private law and international trade law, as well as to the students, practitioners, members of law reform bodies, and civil servants in Europe, and beyond.

Will the new Rome I Regulation meet its goals - to improve the predictability of the outcome of litigation? - to bring certainty as to the law applicable and the free movement of judgments? - to designate the same national law irrespective of the country of the court in which an action is brought? The most important features of this instrument were outlined and discussed by distinguished legal experts from all over Europe and beyond at the conference "The Rome I Regulation", held in Verona on March 2009. This first book in English on the Rome I Regulation contains the papers submitted to that conference.

The enforcement of international contracts in the European Union is increasingly dependent on Community (rather than national) private international law. This book examines the present status and future prospects of Community private international law in the contractual area. It focuses in particular upon the joint analysis of the Rome Convention of 19 June 1980 on the law applicable to contractual obligations (which is likely to be converted in the near future into the Rome I-regulation) and the Brussels I-regulation. Rather than attempting a comprehensive study of Brussels I and Rome I, this book examines a number of key issues considered particularly pertinent from the point of view of the coherence between both instruments. This approach should contribute to the consistency of Community policy-making and legislation in the field of international contracts, to the benefit of market participants. This book is the culmination of a research project funded by the European Commission (DG Justice and Home Affairs, Framework programme for judicial co-operation in civil matters) and co-ordinated by the University of Antwerp Belgium. Eminent European experts have contributed to the book which should prove of interest to law makers, academics and practitioners concerned with the enforcement of contracts in a cross-border context.

European private international law is by now based mainly on a large body of uniform rules such as the Regulations Rome I, Rome II, Brussels I, Brussels I bis. This significant legislative output, however, does not take place in a vacuum. Rules of private international law have been earlier (and still are) adopted at national, international and even European level in scattered regulations and directives. The recent plethora of private international law rules gives rise to issues of delineation and calls for some sort of ordering as gaps, overlaps and contradictions become flagrant. At the same time, the resulting interactions can offer new insight, ideas and even opportunities at a more theoretical level. This book gathers a collection of essays resulting out of a series of international seminars held in Lyon, Barcelona and Louvain-la-Neuve. During those seminars, young researchers selected in an open call for papers had the opportunity to discuss their views among themselves as well as with various specialists of the field, such as more senior academics, EU civil servants, national experts and representatives of other international organisations. The book offers the fresh views of those who will in the future shape the dialectic between the various sources of private international law and attempts to launch a discussion on the “living together” of legal sources. Two ranges of topics are addressed in the book: - firstly, the relationship between EU private international law and national law (substantial and procedural) and/or international law (international instruments of private international law or of uniform substantive law); and - secondly, the relationship between EU private international law and other aspects of EU law (internal market rules of primary law, harmonisation through secondary law and other pieces of legislation enacted in the realm of the area of freedom, security and justice).