European Private Law beyond the Common Frame of Reference ― Essays in Honour of Reinhard Zimmermann

An interim outline edition of the European Commissiona??s Common Frame of Reference (CFR) has recently been published. Over one hundred outstanding European scholars have been engaged with this CFR project. It is difficult to predict the political use to which the CFR will be put. Nevertheless, it will certainly become the cornerstone of the new European private law. For the first time, the European legal community, and indeed the global legal community, has a body of authentically European provisions suitable for adoption as national law or capable of inspiring amendments of national law. This does not mean that the CFR casts aside other mechanisms of approximation of the European national laws, in particular spontaneous harmonization. A polyedric approach is still necessary to complete the Europeanization of private law. This book brings together the papers presented at the 2007 conference on European private law organized by the University of Lleida on the occasion of the conferral of a doctorate honoris causa upon Reinhard Zimmermann. Numerous contributions attest to Reinhard Zimmermann as motivator of the scientific quest that has inspired the development of the new ius commune europaeum. Other papers deal with various substantive aspects of the Draft of the Common Frame of Reference prepared by the Study Group and the Acquis Group on behalf of the European Commission.