Routledge Handbook of Private Law and Sustainability

Marta Santos Silva is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Research Center for Justice and Governance at the University of Minho, and an Affiliated Researcher at the Maastricht European Private Law Institute and the Centre for European Law and Politics at the University of Bremen. Prior to her current role, she worked at Maastricht University and as an affiliated senior researcher at KU Leuven researching at the intersection between private law and sustainability studies. She gained experience working in Brussels for a consultancy working with the European institutions. She was appointed a member of the European Commission’s Expert Group on Liability and New Technologies (Product Liability Formation) and is an elected European Law Institute Council member.Andrea Nicolussi is a Full Professor of Civil Law at the Law Faculty of the Catholic University of Milan, where he teaches comparative private law and family law. His published works focus on unjustified enrichment, contract law and tort law, as well as biolaw and family law. He has taken part in international collaborations such as the Study Group on a European Civil Code and the Eusoco project and was a member of the National Bioethics Committee.Christiane Wendehorst is a Professor of Law at the University of Vienna. She is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the International Academy of Comparative Law, the American Law Institute and numerous international research groups and advisory bodies. Before going to Vienna, she held full professorships in Germany and served as the Managing Director of the Sino‑German Institute for Legal Studies. Professor Wendehorst was the President of the ELI, was one of its Founding Members and is today the ELI’s Scientific Director.Pablo Salvador Coderch studied law and economics at the University of Barcelona. He is a Cofounder of and Emeritus Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona. Since 1995, he is of counsel at Cuatrecasas Abogados. He is a member of the ALI, the ELI and the International Academy of Comparative Law and founder of InDret. He writes and teaches civil law, civil constitutional law, legislative drafting and comparative law of torts and contracts.Marc Clément is, since September 2018, the presiding judge at the Administrative Tribunal of Lyon (France). In addition, he is, since 2014, a member of the French Environmental Authority. He has experience working as a lawyer at the DG Environment of the European Commission and as a legal adviser of the European Environment Agency. He published in 2010 the book "Environment European Law" and contributed extensively to books in the field of environmental law.Fryderyk Zoll is a doctor honoris causa by the West‑Ukrainian National University in Ternopil, Professor at the Chair of Civil Law at Jagiellonian University in Kraków and the European Legal Studies Institute, University of Osnabrück. He is the leading researcher of numerous Polish, German and EU grants, a member of numerous academic associations and a vice‑chairperson of the Committee for the Defence of Democracy (KOD) regional board in Lesser Poland. He is a former member of the European Law Institute’s Executive Committee, the Common Frame of Reference and the Committee of the Acquis Group drafting teams, as well as the Codification Commission at the Polish Ministry of Justice. He has authored more than 200 scientific publications in European private law, ecologisation of private law, consumer law, comparative law, legal education and judicial independence.

‘This book is a valuable resource for academics and practitioners who take up the fight against the current unsustainable and extractive ways of living and to provide hope for present and future generations; it shows us that private law is an ally, ready to fight alongside.’- Begüm KILIMCIOĞLU in European Review of Private Law 3-2025 [1–4]

• PART 1 Greening Private Law and in Particular the Law of Obligations 1 Private Law and Environmental Sustainability Barbara Pozzo2 Towards a Sustainable Interpretation of Standard Contract Terms? Dario Hug3 Environmental Delicts and Post‑Communist Private Law in Bulgaria: Time for Reforms in View of UN’s Sustainable Development Goals and the European Green Deal? Radosveta Vassileva4 Private Law as a Tool to Overcome Split Incentives on Energy Efficiency in the Residential Rental Market Rosa M. Garcia-Teruel5 Who’s Afraid of Sustainability? A Primer for Mainstreaming Sustainability in Private Law Education Candida LeonePART 2 Fostering Environmental Protection through Consumer Law 6 Various Approaches to ‘Greening’ Consumer Sales Law Fryderyk Zoll, Katarzyna Południak‑Gierz, Wojciech Bańczyk and Maciej Bujalski7 The (Un)sustainability of the Sale of Goods in Directive (EU) 2019/771 Maria Miguel Oliveira da Silva and Jorge Morais Carvalho8 The Blinding Effect of EU Consumer Policy Overshadows the Role of Consumer Law in Delivering the Green Transition Lucila de Almeida and Fabrizio Esposito9 Revisiting European Consumer Protection through the Lens of Sustainable Markets Mireia Artigot Golobardes10 Sustainability Challenges in Slovenian Private Law: A Focus on the Nature of Goods Petra WeingerlPART 3 Coordinating Public and Private Sustainability Law in Europe 11 Sustainability as a Regulatory Principle and the Rules of Economic Development: The Italian Legal System Guido Alpa12 Sustainability and the Impact of the Court of Justice of the EU Verica Trstenjak13 Private Law Responses to Imperfect Regulation in International Public Law – The Case of Vessel Recycling Kristina Siig14 Amendments to Articles 9 and 41 of the Italian Constitution on the Protection of the Environment and Intergenerational Responsibility Roberta Calvano15 The Case for a Stable Climate: The Urgent Need for a Subjective (Personality?) Right in the Portuguese Legal System Maria Regina Redinha and Maria Raquel GuimarãesPART 4 Conciliating Property Rights and Environmental Protection 16 Property Law and (More Than One Notion of) Sustainability: A New Field Björn Hoops17 A New Paradigm of Ownership in Italian Private Law? Francesco Zecchin18 Using Tokenisation in Support of a ‘Superficies Sustainable’: A Dutch Case Study on LegalTech to Support Sustainability Goals Jasper Verstappen and Tim van Zuijlen19 The Ecological Function of Property in the Constitution of Slovenia Miha Juhart20 Electromobility Reconstruction of Buildings and Sustainable Property Management Tatjana Josipović21 Distributional Effects of Disaster Management Willemijn van Doorn-Hoekveld and Marleen van RijswickPART 5 Green Economy Transition: Sustainable Consumption and Production 22 The Interplay between Ecodesign and Consumer Sales Law Victor Mehnert and Hans-W. Micklitz23 Cooling‑Off Hot Deals: A Plea for Green Sludge in Distance Sales Contracts Marta Santos Silva and Tomàs Gabriel Garcia‑Mico24 How Can We Persuade Consumers to Purchase More Sustainable Products? A Review of European Legal Developments Carl Dalhammar and Eléonore Maitre-Ekern25 The Battle against Planned Obsolescence – Legal Remedies Denis Philippe26 Leveraging Regulatory Measures to Enhance the Sustainability Potential of Servitisation in the EU Janja Hojnik27 Private Standardisation for Sustainability: Opportunities and Cases Yayun Shen and Michael FaurePART VI Dealing with Climate Justice and Corporate Responsibility 28 Sustainability and Private International Law Ralf Michaels and Samuel Zeh29 Individual Redress and Ecological Claims – New Wine into Old Wineskins? Sandra Passinhas30 The EU Green Deal and the Sustainability of Corporate Activities Hugo-Maria Schally31 Corporate Purpose as a Conduit for Sustainability in Corporate Governance Iain MacNeil and Irene-marie Esser32 Online Platforms and Sustainability: How to Engage Digital Intermediaries in Sustainability Goals? Carlos Gómez Ligüerre and Lela Mélon33 The Sustainability Obligation in Global Value Chain Contracts Jakub Błażej Zwierzchowski and Ewa Rott-Pietrzyk34 Contract Law and Sustainability of Global Value Chains: Assessing the Proposal for an EU Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive from a Contract Law Perspective Rebecca Ravalli35 Environmental Litigation: Is It a Matter of Public or Private Law? An Exploration of Cross‑Fertilisation of Environmental Law Concepts in the Context of French Case Law Marc ClémentEpilogue: A Marble World and Humans Shaking Hands