The Politics Of European Sales Law

"A legal-political inquiry into the drafting of the uniform commercial code, the Vienna Sales Convention, the Dutch civil code and the European consumer sales directive in the context of the Europeanization of contract law."--T.p.

The recently proposed Common European Sales Law is intended to overcome differences between national contract laws. 19 chapters, co-authored by British and German scholars, investigate for the first time how the projected CESL would interact with various aspects of English and German law.

This book presents a complete and coherent view of the subject of Common European Sales Law from a range of European perspectives. The book offers a comparison of the CESL with the CISG, as well as pre-existing instruments, including the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) and the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL). It analyses the process of enactment of CESL and its scope of application, covering areas such as the sale of goods, the supplying (licensing) of digital content, the supply of trade-related services, and consumer protection. It examines the design of the CESL bifurcating businesses into large and small-to-medium sized enterprises, and the providing of rules covering digital content and the supply of trade-related services. Lastly, it studies the field of application of the CESL combined with the already existing EU consumer protection laws, as well as nation-specific laws.​

With the Regulation for a Common European Sales Law (CESL) already appearing on the horizon, it is time to consider the practical impact the instrument will have. What are the specific challenges from the point of view of politics, society, the judiciary, and academia? This book tries to answer these important questions. It is addressed to legal practitioners, teachers, researchers and students alike.

In October 2011, the European Commission introduced its Proposal for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law (CESL) which covers inter alia international business sales – a subject already regulated by the Convention of International Sale of Goods (CISG) which was ratified by 78 member states. How does this new Proposal fit the existing uniform sales law? How have other regions of the world managed the coexistence of global and regional sales law unification? What can Europe learn from the U.S. experience concerning the CISG and the Uniform Commercial Code? What can we learn from the African OHADA which made CISG more or less the internal law of 17 African states, what from Australia where CISG and common law exist alongside? All these questions are intensely discussed in this highly recommendable book written by renowned authors like Larry DiMatteo, Harry Flechtner, Franco Ferrari, Robert Koch, Ulrich Magnus and Bruno Zeller.

This title explores the normative foundations of European contract law. It addresses fundamental political questions on contract law in Europe from the perspective of leading contemporary political theories. Does the law of contract need a democratic basis? To what extent should it be Europeanised? What justifies the binding force of contract and the main remedies for breach? When should weaker parties be protected? Should market transactions be considered legally void when they are immoral? Which rules of contract law should the parties be free to opt out of? Adopting a critical lens, this book interrogates utilitarian, liberal-egalitarian, libertarian, communitarian, civic republican, and discourse-theoretical political philosophies and analyses the answers they provide to these questions. It also situates these theoretical debates within the context of the political landscape of European contract law and the divergent views expressed by lawmakers, legal academics, and other stakeholders. This work moves beyond the acquis positivism, market reductionism, and private law essentialism that tend to dominate these conversations and foregrounds normative complexity. It explores the principles and values behind various arguments used in the debates on European contract law and its future to highlight the normative stakes involved in the practical question of what we, as a society, should do about contract law in Europe. In so doing, it opens up democratic space for the consideration of alternative futures for contract law in the European Union, and for better justifications for those parts of the EU contract law acquis we wish to retain.

The EU Member States' sales law and related areas are on the verge of a major change. With the 186 articles of the Common European Sales Law (CESL), the Commission proposes an optional legal framework that covers the entire lifecycle of sales contracts and contracts for the supply of digital content, as well as related services. Although the aim is to govern these contracts without regard to other national rules of law, several aspects are not addressed and will continue to be governed by national rules. These national rules will also continue to apply if the parties decide not to submit their transactions to the CESL. Understanding the potential impact and usefulness of the CESL requires insight into its content, the relationship between the CESL and the other applicable national rules, and a critical analysis of its advantages and disadvantages. This book is the first to delve deeply into the content of the CESL and to analyze it from a Belgian law perspective.

This book presents a critical analysis of the rules on the contents and effects of contracts included in the proposal for a Common European Sales Law (CESL). The European Commission published this proposal in October 2011 and then withdrew it in December 2014, notwithstanding the support the proposal had received from the European Parliament in February 2014. On 6 May 2015, in its Communication ‘A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe’, the Commission expressed its intention to “make an amended legislative proposal (...) further harmonising the main rights and obligations of the parties to a sales contract”. The critical comments and suggestions contained in this book, to be understood as lessons to learn from the CESL, intend to help not only the Commission but also other national and supranational actors, both public and private (including courts, lawyers, stakeholders, contract parties, academics and students) in dealing with present and future European and national instruments in the field of contract law. The book is structured into two parts. The first part contains five essays exploring the origin, the ambitions and the possible future role of the CESL and its rules on the contents and effects of contracts. The second part contains specific comments to each of the model rules on the contents and effects of contracts laid down in Chapter 7 CESL (Art. 66-78). Together, the essays and comments in this volume contribute to answering the question of whether and to what extent rules such as those laid down in Art. 66-78 CESL could improve or worsen the position of consumers and businesses in comparison to the correspondent provisions of national contract law. The volume adopts a comparative perspective focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on German and Dutch law.