NATIONAL REPORTS ON THE TRANSFER OF MOVABLES IN EUROPE VOLS 1 AND 2. Ed by Wolfgang Faber and Brigitta Lurger Munich: Sellier (www.sellier.de/). Vol 1: 2008. vi + 638 pp. ISBN 978866530737. €59. Vol 2: 2009, vi + 628 pp. ISBN 9783866530966. €59.
| Published date | 01 September 2010 |
| Author | Kenneth G C Reid |
| Pages | 535-537 |
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2010.0318 |
| Date | 01 September 2010 |
Often, “European private law” has seemed to mean little more than the European law of obligations, and certainly property law has been only thinly represented in the pan-European projects of the last few years or in the burgeoning English-language literature which has accompanied them. The position was changed, if not yet transformed, by the publication in February 2009 of the final version of the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) which, unlike the interim version of the previous year, contained a whole book – Book VIII – devoted to property law in the form of the acquisition and loss of ownership of goods. (For a critical commentary, see 498–512 above.) And when the “full” version of the DCFR was published in six volumes in October 2009, it was found that an entire volume (volume V) was given up to Book VIII. Running to more that 1100 pages and containing extensive commentary and national notes, this is a resource of exceptional importance for the study of property law in a comparative context.
A principal source both for these national notes and for the text of Book VIII itself was the national reports on the transfer of movables which were commissioned from experts in each of 27 European jurisdictions. And as “it was soon clear that these reports have a value of their own, worth being shared with the scientific community as a starting point for further comparative research in property law as well as with practitioners searching for information on foreign legal systems” (vol 1, v-vi), the decision was taken to publish them. On the evidence of the volumes under review – the first two in a projected series of six – that decision is amply justified.
Volume 1 contains the national reports for Austria (Wolfgang Faber), Estonia (Kai Kullerkupp), Italy (Alessio Greco) and Slovenia (Claudia Rudolf, Vesna Rijavec and Tomaž Keresteš), while volume 2 covers England and Wales (Sandra Frisby and Michael Jones), Ireland (Caterina Gardiner), Scotland (David Carey Miller, Malcolm Combe, Andrew Steven and Scott Wortley), and Cyprus (Stéphanie Laulhé Shaelou, Stelia Stylianou and Karolina Anastasiou). As well as contributing the lucid and engaging report for Austria, Wolfgang Faber has also edited the volumes along with Brigitta Lurger, who had earlier shared with him the task of leading the working group which prepared the draft of Book VIII.
As one might expect, the reports vary both in size – from not much more that 100 pages (Estonia, Slovenia and Cyprus) to...
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