The Proposal for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law: Deficits of the Most Recent Textual Layer of European Contract Law
| DOI | 10.3366/elr.2012.0119 |
| Pages | 301-357 |
| Author | Reinhard Zimmermann,Eva-Maria Kieninger,Horst Eidenmüller,Nils Jansen,Gerhard Wagner |
| Published date | 01 September 2012 |
| Date | 01 September 2012 |
The Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Common European Sales Law (PR CESL), published on 11 October 2011,
COM(2011) 635 final.
is a milestone in the development of European contract law. It is a text which cannot merely be labelled “academic law” in the sense of constituting a set of model rules drawn up by a group of professors.See R Zimmermann, “ ‘Wissenschaftliches Recht’ am Beispiel (vor allem) des europäischen Vertragsrechts”, in C Bumke and A Röthel (eds),
See A Hartkamp, M Hesselink, E Hondius, C Joustra, E du Perron and M Veldman (eds),
On these types of contracts, particularly from the point of view of consumer protection, see M Schmidt-Kessel, L Young, S Benninghoff, C Langhanke and G Russek, “Should the Consumer Rights Directive apply to digital content?” [2011] Gemeinschaftsprivatrecht (hereafter GPR) 7; M Loos et al,
Art 5 PR CESL. Surprisingly, the draft Regulation does not cover contracts linked to a consumer credit: art 6 PR CESL, and see B.4(b) below.
Art 8 and art 9 PR CESL; see also B.5 below.
Recital (10) PR CESL.
For clarification, see M Fornasier, “28. versus 2. Regime – Kollisionsrechtliche Aspekte eines optionalen europäischen Vertragsrechts” (2012) 76 Rabels Zeitschrift für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht (hereafter RabelsZ) 401.
The overall objective of the draft Regulation is to improve the functioning of the internal market by facilitating cross-border trade.
Explanatory Memorandum PR CESL section 1; Communication from the Commission to the European Parliament, the Council, the European Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions: A Common European Sales Law to facilitate cross-border transactions in the single market, COM(2011) 636 final, section 1. The DCESL is evidently mainly intended for electronic trading: see also recital (26) PR CESL (“…particularly those [contracts] entered into online”). This is also apparent from the recurrent use of the ‘blue button’ image; see H Schulte-Nölke, “Der Blue Button kommt – Konturen einer rechtlichen Infrastruktur für den Binnenmarkt” (2011) 19 Zeitschrift für Europäisches Privatrecht (hereafter ZEuP) 749. However, important areas of online trading have special goodwill practices and reputational mechanisms which very considerably reduce the practical relevance of the legal regime: W Doralt, “Rote Karte oder grünes Licht für den Blue Button? Zur Frage eines optionalen europäischen Vertragsrechts” (2011) 211 Archiv für die civilistische Praxis (hereafter AcP) 1 at 24–27.
By subjecting contracts to a uniform legal regime, it should be possible for businesses to lower their transaction costs. At the same time, contracts concluded under the CESL are also intended to be attractive to consumers, for the CESL is characterised by a particularly high level of consumer protection which “in total significantly exceeds the level of protection available in each individual Member State”.See Commission Communication (n 9) section 2.2. The original German quotation is: “…in der Summe deutlich über dem Schutzstandard jedes einzelnen Mitgliedstaates liegt”: Schulte-Nölke (n 9) at 755 (Professor Schulte-Nölke is the German member of the Expert Group which drew up the CESL). The Commission has published country specific factsheets which show in which respects consumers would be better off under the DCESL than under the various national laws in Europe: see
Art 4 PR CESL.
Art 7 PR CESL. Small or medium-sized enterprises, as defined by the proposed Regulation, are traders which (a) employ fewer than 250 persons, and (b) have an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million or an annual balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43 million, or, for an SME which has its habitual residence in a Member State whose currency is not the euro, the equivalent amounts in the currency of that Member State. For further details, see also the Commission Recommendation of 6 May 2003 concerning the definition of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises [2003] OJ L 124/36.
This is the terminology used to date. In the list of definitions contained in the proposed Regulation (art 2 (e)) the term “business” has been replaced by “trader”. This change in terminology originated in the preparatory work for the Consumer Rights Directive (on which see A.2 below).
See also O Lando, “On a European contract law for consumers and businesses – future perspectives”, in R Schulze and J Stuyck (eds),
Art 13 PR CESL.
The draft CESL (DCESL) now published is the latest in a long line of texts which build upon, and must therefore be, hermeneutically related to each other. The first texts were the
O Lando and H Beale (eds),
UNIDROIT (ed),
C von Bar and E Clive (eds),
R Zimmermann, “Europäisches Privatrecht – Irrungen, Wirrungen”, in
M Hesselink, “The Common Frame of Reference as a source of European private law” (2009) 83 Tulane LR 919 at 923. See also N Jansen and R Zimmermann, “A European Civil Code in all but name: discussing the nature and purposes of the Draft Common Frame of Reference” (2010) 69 CLJ 98.
For criticism, see N Jansen and R Zimmermann, “Contract formation and mistake in European contract law: a genetic comparison of transnational model rules” (2011) 31 OJLS 625 at 629–633. For general criticism of the DCFR, see H Eidenmüller, F Faust, H Grigoleit, N Jansen, G Wagner and R Zimmermann, “The Common Frame of Reference for European private law – policy choices and codification problems” (2008) 28 OJLS 659; S Grundmann, “The structure of the DCFR – which approach for today's contract law?” (2008) 4 European...
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