Towards A European Civil Code

Since its original publication ten years ago, Towards a European Civil Code has become an international classic. It is both a preeminent reference in the debate on the future of European private law, and a standard text in legal education in many European universities. This third, fully revised and expanded edition includes new contributions on such important matters as the following: constitutionalisation; social concerns; economic analysis; arguments against a European civil code; e-commerce; and sales, service and insurance contracts. All forty four chapters have been brought fully up to date with European and national developments, making Towards a European Civil Code the cornerstone in any endeavour involving issues in European private law.

Does the European Union need a Civil Code? Like a dark cloud, this question hovers over debates about the future of private law in Europe. Few advocate explicitly the adoption of a civil code in the immediate future, yet many have taken instrumental steps along a road that seems to lead only in that direction. Those steps, - whether they be in the task of discovering common core of principles of private law among national legal systems,1 or producing a systematic body of principles such as the Principles of European Contract Law2 and the Draft Common Frame of Reference of rules and principles for the law of obligations,3 or augmenting the scope of Directives to include more and more types of transactions, - all have the same direction of travel towards a comprehensive European set of rules governing contracts and related legal obligations. Although these eff orts are fascinating intellectual ventures and may prove useful for some purposes, it is important to ask whether the European Union really needs to go on this journey towards a Civil Code.

Regions within European Union member states (such as Scotland in the UK and Catalonia in Spain) have their own legal systems: how will the process of 'Europeanization' affect them? This volume examines the phenomenon of 'regional' private law in the European Union, considering jurisdictions and laws below those of the member states and drawing comparisons with other such jurisdictions elsewhere in the world, such as Louisiana and Quebec. The whole is considered in relation to the development of European private law, and the use of codification in that process. This volume will be of interest to academic lawyers worldwide, advanced law students and European policy-makers.

In this volume, the Study Group and the Acquis Group present the first academic Draft of a Common Frame of Reference (DCFR). The Draft is based in part on a revised version of the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL) and contains Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law in an interim outline edition. It covers the books on contracts and other juridical acts, obligations and corresponding rights, certain specific contracts, and non-contractual obligations. One purpose of the text is to provide material for a possible "political" Common Frame of Reference (CFR) which was called for by the European Commission's Action Plan on a More Coherent European Contract Law of January 2003.

In 2003, the European Commission published its Action Plan on European contract law. That plan formed an important step towards a European Civil Code. In its Plan the Commission tried to depoliticise the codification process by asking a group of academic experts to prepare what it called a 'common frame of reference'. This paper, published in the European Law Journal in 2004, argued that drafting a European Civil Code involves making many choices which are essentially political. It further argued that the technocratic approach which the Commission had adopted in the Action Plan effectively excluded most stakeholders from having their say during the stage when the real choices were made. Therefore, before the drafting of the CFR/ECC starts, the Commission should have submitted a list of policy questions regarding the main issues of European private law to the European Parliament and the other stakeholders. Such an alternative procedure would have repoliticised the process. It would have increased the democratic basis for a European Civil Code and thus its legitimacy.