The European Civil Code The Way Forward

Hugh Collins argues that the European Union should develop a civil code to provide uniform rules for contracts, property rights and protection against civil wrongs, thus drawing together the differing national traditions with respect to the detailed regulation of civil society. The benefits of such a code would lie not so much in facilitating cross border trade, but in establishing foundations for a denser network of transnational relations of civil society, which in turn would help to overcome the present popular resistance to effective and functional political institutions at a European level.

These principled foundations for a more inclusive and less balkanised civil society in Europe also provide elements of a required European social model that offers necessary safeguards for consumers, workers and disadvantaged groups against the pressures of market forces in an increasingly global economic system.

• Assesses the policy justifications for and success of existing European private law measures, thus highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the EU’s achievements
• Links the discussions about European contract law to the broader debates about the political future of the European Union, the internal market, and the governance structures of the European Union
• Focuses on EU private law itself and its actual and potential impact on national law, thus linking discussions about private law to the need to have a multi-level system of governance in Europe