Uniform Rules for European Contract Law?

Over the last 30 years, the evolution of acquis communautaire in consumer law and harmonising soft law proposals have utterly transformed the landscape of European contract law. The initial enthusiasm and approval for the EU programme has waned and, post Brexit, it currently faces increasing criticism over its effectiveness. In this collection, leading academics assess the project and ask if such judgements are fair, and suggest how harmonisation in the field might be better achieved. This book looks at the uniform rules in the context of: the internal market; national legislators and courts; bridging the gap between common and civil law; and finally their influence on non-member states. Critical and rigorous, it provides a timely and unflinching critique of one of the most important fields of harmonisation in the European Union.

1. The First Stage of Modern European Contract Law
Francisco de Elizalde
2. The Role for European Contract Law: Uniformity or Diversity?
Hugh Beale

Part I: Uniform Rules for the Internal Market
3. Ius Commune and Contract Law
Bart Wauters
4. Optimal Standards for the Single Market: A Law and Economics Approach
Juan José Ganuza and Fernando Gómez Pomar
5. Non-national Rules in the Arbitration of Commercial Contracts
Zeynep Derya Tarman

Part II: Uniform Rules for National Legislators and Courts
6. The Modernisation of the Law of Obligations Using the Principles of European Contract Law
Encarna Roca Trías
7. Uniform Rules as Guidelines for National Courts and Legislatures: The German Experience
Thomas Ackermann
8. National Reforms: New Instruments Towards Converging Rules within Europe? The Example of the French Contract Law Reform (2016)
Bénédicte Fauvarque-Cosson

Part III: Uniform Rules to Bridge the Gap between the Common Law and the Civil Law
9. The Rise of EU Consumer Law between Common Law and Civil Law Legal Traditions
Geraint Howells and Mateja Durovic
10. Bridging the Gap: The CISG as a Successful Legal Hybrid between Common Law and Civil Law?
André Janssen and Navin G Ahuja
11. The Sources and Effects of Contractual Terms: Towards an Approximation of Common Law and Civil Law
Francisco de Elizalde

Part IV: Uniform Rules as a Model for Non-EU Countries
12. European Contract Law and Asian Contract Law
Mateja Durovic
13. The Two Spirits of the PLACL
Iñigo de la Maza Gazmuri
14. The Effects of European Harmonisation on Turkish Contract Law
Isik Önay
15. An American Perspective on the European Harmonisation of Contract Law
Larry A DiMatteo

“Taken together, the essays collected in this book present a timely overview of the state of play of harmonised European contract law. For readers who are new to the field, such as students of transnational or European contract law, the book provides a fine introduction to the main themes and problems of harmonisation. For readers familiar with the field, the book confirms what lessons have been learnt since Ole Lando first proposed the creation of a set of Principles of European Contract Law. The creation of a European Civil Code, which was once a dream of some scholars in the field, has not come to be.” –  Vanessa Mak, Professor of Private Law, Tilburg Law School, Modern Law Review