IUS Commune: European and Comparative Law Series – serie

Legislatures sometimes adopt laws that create a special legal regime for a particular case rather than general rules for an indefinite number of situations or persons. These ad hoc laws are controversial. Politically, legislatures may be forced to act in one specific case (for example as a respond to a public outcry), but in doing so they risk violating the principles of the rule of law. Such legislative practice might lead to abuse of legislative power, inequality of citizens before the law, legal uncertainty, and weakening of the position of the courts. The purpose of this first in-depth comparative study in the fields of constitutional law and legislative studies is to clarify the use and existence of ad hoc laws and to place them within a constitutional framework of the rule of law. It is a comparative study of the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. Those who will benefit from this book are constitutional law/legislation/human rights academics, constitutional law practitioners, judges from constitutional courts, legislative lawyers and legislators.This book provides innovative and profound insights from a comparative perspective and is a valuable addition to library collections.

The continuing and accelerating process of European integration impacts on European legal education, or ought to have its impact on our ideas about legal education in Europe. Although legal education in Europe is mainly national and usually conducted in the national language, there are initiatives that seek to break through the national barriers and move towards a truly European legal education. The Maastricht European Law School, which focuses on European Union law, international law and comparative law, fully taught in English, is one of these initiatives. In this edited volume we have endeavoured to reflect upon European Legal education in the light of that program, which has been on offer for a couple of years now and which attracts a great deal of students from all over Europe and the world as well, and to offer to interested readers ways forward as well as obstacles and points to ponder. This books pays attention to the developments in European law and the effects these have on legal education in general as well as in other fields.Drawing from their own experiences, the authors describe the current state of law, offer perspectives on future developments and explain how they translate these developments in the law school curriculum. All the contributions in this book have in common that each author seeks to better prepare students for a future in a more integrated Europe. It is our purpose to generate a European debate about the subject and to move the European discussion forward to concrete steps to effectively establish European legal education for new generations of lawyers that will work in an increasingly Europeanised legal domain.

In November 2010, the Ius Commune Research School devoted the Liability and Insurance workshop on its annual conference to 'the Power of Punitive Damages'. In their search for better ways to enforce private and public legal rules, prevent damage, and compensate victims of grave wrongdoing, European legal scholars and policy makers show an increased interest in this particular private law remedy. The twenty-two authors of this book reflect on the pros and cons, applicability, aims and limitations of punitive damages in terms of different legal themes. Some of the authors are, because of their legal background, familiar with punitive damages, whereas others are not. Likewise, some take an enthusiastic stance, whereas others remain prudent. The result is a unique collection of thoughts, suggestions and critical questions which takes the European punitive damages debate to the next level.It improves perception of the private law sanction, which is often feared by Europeans, and its common law background, but also gives new insights as regards the question whether European societies are missing out by not adding this powerful penal incentive to the already existing array of private law remedies.

Access to European Union not only provides a comprehensive overview of European integration but also offers a fresh insight with each revised edition. Thanks to its clear and systematic approach, this book guides the reader through the maze of European Union policies. It throws light upon the European institutions, their raison d'etre, their objectives and their experience, and explains EU measures, legal provisions and economic programmes. The book contains over 3000 references to the Official Journal of the European Communities and more than 500 bibliographic references, selected by topic so as to help the reader deepen the study of the subjects of his or her interest.

This empirical study of the procedural rights of suspects in four EU jurisdictions - France, Scotland, the Netherlands and England and Wales - focuses on three of the procedural rights set out in the EU Roadmap for strengthening the procedural rights of suspected or accused persons in criminal proceedings - the right to interpretation and translation; the right to information and the letter of rights; and the right to legal assistance before and during police interrogation. In order to examine how these procedural rights operate in practice, the authors spent between two and five months in eight field sites across the four jurisdictions. During this time they observed lawyers and police officers during the period of police custody; examined case records; observed lawyer-client consultations; and attended suspect interrogations. Furthermore, they conducted 75 interviews with police officers, lawyers and accredited legal representatives. In addition to producing and analysing empirical data, the authors have developed training guidelines for lawyers and police officers involved in the police detention process for use across the EU.The project team also produced a series of recommendations for legislative and policy changes designed to ensure better enforcement of the EU procedural rights' instruments that are envisaged in the Stockholm Programme. The was carried out by the Universities of Maastricht, Warwick and the West of England, together with JUSTICE. Avon and Somerset Police and the Open Society Justice Initiative were also collaborators on the project.

This book argues that motives for committing breach of contract should matter in the application of remedies in contract. Deliberate breach of contract requires a different and sterner answer from the law of contract than any other breach of contract, because providing equal remedies for all breaches of contract threatens parties' trust in the law of contract. This statement should be reflected in the law of remedies in contract. The box of remedies available to the victim of deliberate breach of contract should be designed accordingly. In general, the author argues that the victim of contractual breach should have a stronger right to enforced performance of the contract, and that he should have easier access to damages and receive a larger amount of damages if he is the victim of deliberate breach of contract. The arguments for the chosen approach to deliberate breach of contract are primarily drawn from comparative legal research - mainly in the form of studying court decisions, academic contributions and other common legal sources: in other words, the classic legal approach - and law and economics literature.About the author Martijn van Kogelenberg was born in 1980 in Ridderkerk (Zuid-Holland), the Netherlands. In 2003 he graduated in Russian Studies, specializing in Russian civil law. In 2004 he graduated in Dutch law, specializing in Dutch civil law. After his studies in Leiden, he entered the University of Oxford to follow a post-graduate Magister Juris degree. In September 2006 Martijn started working on his dissertation at the civil law department of the Erasmus School of Law (Rotterdam). In addition to his doctoral thesis, he published several articles, including an international publication. He has also been involved in teaching various civil law subjects to law students and in giving post-academic courses and lectures in contract law.

The Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF) is an informal international network with an annual conference that gives young property law researchers the opportunity to present their research to both young and established property law scholars from around the world. Property Law Perspectives III contains selected contributions from the fourth edition of the Young Property Lawyers Forum and Masterclass. The book offers an interesting selection of recent developments in the broad field of property law, including contributions on constitutional property law (with topics such as expropriation procedures, South African tenure, and expropriation of waterfalls for hydropower development), national private property law (with for example chapters on the English Land Registration Act 2002 and on virtual property), and European and comparative property law (with contributions about French fiducie versus trust, the global art market, and factory machinery bought under hire-purchase agreements).The wide variety of topics discussed by a young and promising generation of property lawyers make this book a fascinating read for anyone interested in developments in property law.

This comparative research was triggered by the assessment of property registration law published in the World Bank Doing Business reports (DB). The international and interdisciplinary team aimed to assess how legal certainty was imagined and put in practice in French and English law, using commercial real estate as a case study. Not only this study identifies the economic impact of the law in both jurisdictions, it also looked at the practitioners functions in the dealing with commercial real estate transactions. In other words, it analyses the topical position of practitioners such as the French notaires and the role of solicitors in England. Nowadays, the profession of notaires is confronted to numerous challenges. For instance, nationality requirement for its access, has been ruled by the ECJ as contrary to the freedom of establishment and art. 49 TFEU and not justified by "the exercise of public authority".In this study, the authors argue that the actual nature and the quality of the work done by the practitioners should be considered as well as financial cost and delays. They also argue that a liberalisation of professions such as civil law notaires would have very little impact on the cost associated with doing business. As a matter of fact, both the English and the French mechanisms are very similar in their objectives and outcome even though they handle the same transaction differently, because of the culturally different relevant angles.

This volume tackles contemporary problems of legal accommodation of diversity in Europe and recent developments in the area in diverse European legal regimes. Despite professing the motto Unity in Diversity Europe appears to be struggling with discord rather than unity. Legal discussions reflect a crisis when it comes to matters of migration, accommodation of minorities and dealing with the growing heterogeneity of European societies. This volume illustrates that the current legal conundrums stem from European oscillation between, on the one hand, acknowledging the need of accommodation, and, on the other, the tendencies to preserve existing legal traditions. It claims that these opposite tendencies have led Europe to the edge of pluralism. This 'edge', just as the linguistic interpretation of the word 'edge', carries multiple meanings conveying a plethora of problems encountered by law when dealing with diversity. The authors attempt to explore and illustrate these multiple edges of pluralism tracing back their origins and examining the contemporary legal conundrums they have led to. The volume encourages the readers to explore whether there are fundamental problems with approaches to diversity and if so can they be rescued from their current precarious position. It asks whether Europe at the edge is truly capable to unite in diversity and develop a constructive approach to its growing pluralism. The book is aimed at academics, practitioners and students focusing their work on contemporary problems of diversity, multiculturalism and accommodation of migrants as well as everybody interested in the area.

In the last couple of decades the national administrative law of the Member States has been influenced by case law from the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU). One of the main objectives of this research is to examine this influence and more specifically the influence of EU law on cooperation between public authorities. The present work examines how and to what extent EU (public procurement) law has an influence on the way a public authority organises and discharges its public service tasks. The object of this book is limited to cooperative agreements (public contracts and service concessions) concluded between public authorities as a means to organise or discharge public service tasks. Public authorities and private enterprises should be made aware as far as possible of the potential impact of EU law on certain types of cooperative agreements. This knowledge will prevent situations where the public authorities are post facto confronted with lawsuits that might force them to withdraw completely from cooperative associations that are already underway. It also enables private enterprises to be aware that in this context they may benefit from an open market. The book gives lawyers and practitioners in the field the most actual theoretical and practical background on the subject.

As the European Union (EU) matures, there is an increasing debate, partly fuelled by fierce national criticism offered by Eurosceptic politicians, partly initiated by the EU institutions themselves, on the way in which the EU has developed and what the EU must look like in the future. This debate includes a discussion on one of the core aspects of European integration: at which level should the rules be set and who decides where the authority to do so should lie? Private law has an important role to play in this discussion. Many private law rules touch on the core of the internal market as they serve to foster trade or to offer protection to market participants, such as consumers.In 2011, the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (M-EPLI) was founded. M-EPLI researchers combine European Private Law scholarship in the fields of contract, property, commercial and procedural law as well as legal theory. In this book M-EPLI fellows present perspectives on the allocation of competences in European Private Law. This includes both general perspectives and criteria on the basis of which to decide who does what in European Private Law, but also specific perspectives relating to the various fields M-EPLI's researchers cover. All contributions share a common approach in which each author or team of authors addresses the same two questions: (i) What are the criteria to decide upon the ideal design of their field of law for the EU?; (ii) Who should set the rules: what is in the author(s) view the optimal mix of national and European producers of legal norms?

The international character of shipping and transport has always been a great incubator for harmonisation of law. Recently, there has been increasing interest within the EU in harmonisation of general private law, with different harmonisation instruments such as common core, PECL and DCFR coming into existence. Even though both shipping and transport law and the harmonisation instruments aim at further harmonisation of private law, the potential interplay between them has never been examined thoroughly in doctrine.In this book the possible impact of these private law harmonisation instruments on shipping and transport law is assessed. First of all the book investigates whether harmonisation instruments can contribute to uniformity of shipping and transport law in fields where such uniformity is currently lacking. Secondly, it looks at whether the current harmonisation instruments or a future European private law could change (inter)national shipping and transport law.This cross-fertilisation between shipping law and harmonisation instruments makes this book not only a valuable instrument for shipping lawyers, but also for anyone interested in harmonisation of private law.

A book series devoted to the common foundations of the European legal systems. The Ius Commune Europaeum series includes comparative legal studies as well as studies on the effect of treaties within national legal systems. All areas of the law are covered. The books are published in various European languages under the auspices of METRO, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research at Maastricht University. This book discusses the impact of EU law on selected national legal systems. The authors analyse how the civil procedure system of their country has reacted to increasing Europeanisation and influence of EU law. They identify significant changes and disseminate the reasons for particular developments and the further implications of EU law on the civil procedure.Europe is in a period of increasing Europeanisation of civil procedure. Procedural elements of EU law are based on decentralised enforcement, leaving enforcement and procedural issues to the Member States. Consequently, there is vast amount of EU case law that is relevant for national procedural law. The supremacy of EU law and, inter alia, the requirements of effectiveness and equivalence may be relevant for several topics of national civil procedural law, for example ex officio application of EU law, enforcement, insolvency proceedings, evidence, etc. Both EU legislation and doctrinal changes in EU case law touch upon various topics of the procedural law of the Member States. In a concluding chapter, a more comprehensive comparison between the countries represented in the book is made. Which doctrines, which pieces of legislation or features in legislation pose problems for national civil procedure? Are some legal systems or topics more prone to integrate European rules, and are others more resistant to changes? This book displays the Europeanisation of national civil procedure law and helps to understand this development from the perspective of Member States.

Managing scarcity to serve the public interest is a classic government task. An important way to execute this task is by allocating individual rights that are only available in limited quantities, such as CO2 emission allowances, gambling licences, subsidies, radio frequencies, public contracts and parking permits. Whereas economic and political theory has paid much attention to the allocation of scarce goods and rights, until now a consistent and general legal theory of 'the allocating government' has been missing. This is striking given the fact that limited rights have to be allocated within many sectors and are often of great social significance and financial importance. Decisions on allocation often lead to disputes. This book provides a unique exploration of building blocks for a consistent and general legal theory on the allocation of limited rights by administrative authorities. This book is useful to legislators, administrative authorities, applicants, interested third parties and the courts. The EU-law perspective is an important element in this book, but comparative law and doctrinal approaches are also taken into account. The contributions in this book have been enriched by information from national reports on the allocation of gambling licences, radio frequencies and CO2 emission permits in seven EU Member States: France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania and Spain. (See P. Adriaanse, F. van Ommeren, W. den Ouden and J. Wolswinkel (eds.), Scarcity and the State II. Member State Reports on Gambling Licences, Radio Frequencies and CO2 Emission Permits, Intersentia, Antwerp 2016).

Risk taking in business contributes towards innovation. Yet excessive risk taking is associated with corporate failure. Many authors have analysed the relationship between personal liability rules of managers and excessive risk taking. In this context, previous researchers have often argued that insurance against personal liability of the manager (D&O insurance) would weaken the manager's incentive to take care.However, little is known about the workings and effects of D&O insurance. This book analyses how D&O insurance should work ideally and how it currently works in the USA, the UK, the Netherlands and Germany.It illustrates how D&O insurance threatens but also benefits society and the economy. In fact, a properly functioning D&O insurance system can more elegantly incentivize adequate risk taking than for example, direct regulation of managerial activity (e.g. disqualification) or the adoption of harsher liability rules.This book provides an overview of the implications of D&O insurance, in particular to:- policy makers who can take concrete reform proposals from this book;- investors who can increase their returns by using the information on corporate D&O insurance policies;- creditors who can better estimate their debtor's default risk by understanding the debtor's D&O insurance policy; and- finally, prospective insurers who can learn in depth about the D&O market, the policy design and the D&O risk.

Technological and economical developments require contracting parties to be informed and advised: informed about the characteristics of the services or the goods they order; well advised about their choices and options; informed about the remedies that may be used against them; and well protected from the consequences of a lack of information or notification.This book analyses several aspects of these information and notification duties. It is the result of fruitful collaboration as part of the Ius Commune Research Schools Contract Law and Law of Obligations research programme. Information and notification duties were the theme of a contract law workshop during the 19th Ius Commune Conference in Edinburgh in November 2014. This book contains the proceedings of that workshop, with contributions by Sanne Jansen (Leuven), Johanna Waelkens (Leuven), Johan Vannerom (Leuven), Carien de Jager (Groningen), Joasia Luzak (Amsterdam), Gerard de Vries (Amsterdam), and Mark Kawakami and Catalina Goanta (Maastricht), with an introduction by Ilse Samoy (Leuven) and Marco B.M. Loos (Amsterdam).

A European Legal Framework for Nuclear Liability discusses nuclear liability and the interplay of the different stakeholders involved in the nuclear sector. It highlights shortcomings of the current liability regimes, suggests alternatives and calls for a more active role of the European Union in the area of nuclear liability. Contrary to existing literature, it refocuses the discussion of nuclear liability in the European Union away from the Euratom Treaty, arguing that the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union could also provide a sufficient legal basis for a European nuclear liability regime.The book presents a proposal for a harmonised European liability regime and discusses possibilities to enhance the feasibility of such a reform. It calls for a stronger involvement of the public in the nuclear sector and emphasises the intrinsic link between effective safety regulation and liability and compensation mechanisms. It also describes the need to find ways in which safety regulation and liability rules can mutually reinforce each other.This book sets out the regulation of nuclear energy and pressing legal questions to do with the commercial exploitation of nuclear energy. Equally it will be of interest for government officials, policy advisors, environmental agencies and other practitioners in the nuclear sector.

This book analyses the theory of efficient breach in English sales law, European Union contract law and Chinese contract law. It analyses the framework of the efficient breach theory and reconsiders the implications of this theory. According to the traditional efficient breach theory, the remedy of expectation damages is able to motivate efficient breach, which brings the breaching party economic surplus without making the non-breaching party worse off. The essential problems are how to motivate contract parties to make rational decisions and how to solve cases where performance of a contract turns out to be less efficient after its conclusion. The second part of the book further extends the efficient breach theory to the study of contract law systems by analysing how exactly those laws react to breach and what solutions are adopted by them.The comparison of these three systems is more than a mere description of the differences and similarities in the content. More importantly, this comparative research also analyses whether or not the differences between these systems will influence the level of efficiency produced by each legal system by taking account of the different traditions and the concepts of contracts involved in each legal system. Researchers in contract law will also be interested in this approach, particularly for re-thinking the question of whether one legal system is definitely better or worse than the other two.

Using insights from multilevel governance and pluralism, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the development of European private law in the Dutch and German legal order. It focuses on the question whether the coexistence of national and European state and non-state actors is detrimental or beneficial for the predictability, consistency, accessibility and responsiveness of European private law. On the one hand, the discourse on multilevel governance draws attention to the possibility that problems may arise if interdependent actors do not sufficiently interact. This may be the case in European private law, where national and European legislators and courts have become increasingly interdependent on one another in ensuring that European private law develops predictably, consistently, accessibly, and responsively. The book analyzes the development of European private law by national and European state actors through codifications, blanket clauses, soft laws and general principles in the light of interdependence. In addition, non-state actors have played an increasingly important role in developing binding rules in European private law. This development necessitates more interaction between actors, and more attention for the potentially binding effect of privately developed rules on third parties' rights. The book accordingly develops a normative framework to determine the extent to which private actors should be able to develop binding rules, based on principles of democracy, private autonomy, and concerns for hetero-determination. On the other hand, pluralism perspectives advocate the development of European private law at different levels and jurisdictions in the light of responsiveness, regulatory competition, and opportunities for mutual learning. The book explores whether these benefits have materialized in the development of European private law, drawing attention to failed and successful instances of regulatory competition and mutual learning, and resulting innovations. The book sketches new governance techniques that may help interdependent actors take into account one another's initiatives and benefit from each other's insights, although they may also entail hetero-determination.

Property Law Perspectives IV contains a selection of the papers presented at the fifth meeting of the Young Property Lawyers Forum (YPLF), which took place at Wadham College, Oxford, in 2014. The YPLF is an informal, international network of property law researchers, which is primarily aimed at junior scholars. The papers presented at the YPLF are representative of the rapid developments currently taking place in property law scholarship, particularly in connection with EU law, environmental law, and internet law. Property Law Perspectives IV shows that attention is still being paid to the roots of property law. The papers in this volume take us on legal and historical journeys, exploring basic principles and well-known concepts of property law, such as the prior tempore rule, expropriation, proprietary security, and the rules on acquisitive and extinctive prescription. The wide variety of topics and jurisdictions discussed make this book a fascinating read for anyone interested in property law.

In numerous fields of law, ranging from family law to company law, private actors increasingly set their own rules, revert to private enforcement of those rules and choose the applicable law. Within each field this tendency has already been scrutinised. Until now, however, few attempts have been made to look at these phenomena together with a view to arriving at conclusions that go beyond one specific field. This book is a first attempt to fill this gap. It is relevant for scholars and practitioners working in the individual fields of law covered (private international law, company law, family law, consumer law and commercial law) as well as for scholars and policy makers trying to grasp the overall nature of the increasing privatisation of the law.

A book series devoted to the common foundations of the European legal systems. The Ius Commune Europaeum series includes comparative legal studies as well as studies on the effect of treaties within national legal systems. All areas of the law are covered. The books are published in various European languages under the auspices of METRO, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research at Maastricht University. This book discusses the impact of EU law on selected national legal systems. The authors analyse how the civil procedure system of their country has reacted to increasing Europeanisation and influence of EU law. They identify significant changes and disseminate the reasons for particular developments and the further implications of EU law on the civil procedure.Europe is in a period of increasing Europeanisation of civil procedure. Procedural elements of EU law are based on decentralised enforcement, leaving enforcement and procedural issues to the Member States. Consequently, there is vast amount of EU case law that is relevant for national procedural law. The supremacy of EU law and, inter alia, the requirements of effectiveness and equivalence may be relevant for several topics of national civil procedural law, for example ex officio application of EU law, enforcement, insolvency proceedings, evidence, etc. Both EU legislation and doctrinal changes in EU case law touch upon various topics of the procedural law of the Member States. In a concluding chapter, a more comprehensive comparison between the countries represented in the book is made. Which doctrines, which pieces of legislation or features in legislation pose problems for national civil procedure? Are some legal systems or topics more prone to integrate European rules, and are others more resistant to changes? This book displays the Europeanisation of national civil procedure law and helps to understand this development from the perspective of Member States.

This rise of a particular kind of European Union legislation known as the 'optional instrument' is a novel trend in the context of EU law, and one that until now has not been comprehensively mapped or explored. This study examines and discusses existing and proposed EU Optional Instruments (OIs) in different fields of European law, including company law, intellectual property law and procedural law (such as the European Company, the Community Trade Mark and the European Small Claims Procedure, respectively), as well as contract law. The study identifies the core elements that define Optional Instruments of the EU and distinguish them from other kinds of EU legislation, especially so-called approximating measures. It provides a detailed overview of a total of twelve OIs in the aforementioned policy areas, charting their development, characteristics and (where appropriate) usage in practice. It investigates the case for and against the use of optional instruments as an alternative means of EU law-making, by analyzing and evaluating the principal arguments in the debate surrounding the use of this legislative method. Finally, it offers an explanation of the varied degree of 'success' of EU OIs already in existence, by identifying possible factors that play a role in this respect and testing the significance of these factors with reference to available empirical data. In doing so, the author provides a framework for future research into this developing phenomenon, as well as guidance for the elaboration of future Optional Instruments of the European Union.

Biofuels are promoted as a type of renewable energy from biomass that replaces fossil fuels in transportation, in an attempt to achieve the three-fold objectives of energy security, rural development, and GHG emission reductions. However, the increased consumption and production of biofuels have been increasingly subject to criticism for their potential negative impacts on environmental and socio-economic sustainability, and these impacts could be intertwined and have implications ranging from local to global scales. Concerns over sustainability of biofuels have already led to regulatory measures particularly for biofuels in various legal systems, but the cross-cutting and multi-scale nature of the sustainability issue increases the complexity of regulation. In this context, this book is dedicated to a comparative analysis on the state-of-the affairs of the regulatory approaches to sustainability of biofuels in the international, EU, and Chinese legal frameworks, examining whether they may inclusively address sustainability concerns in environmental and socio-economic dimensions. This book finally concludes with observations from the comparative analysis, on the premise of which recommendations are made regarding the prospect for an inclusive regulatory approach to sustainability of biofuels taking account of the existing harmonisation, integration, transplantation, and convergence effects at different levels.

A book series devoted to the common foundations of the European legal systems. The Ius Commune Europaeum series includes comparative legal studies as well as studies on the effect of treaties within national legal systems. All areas of the law are covered. The books are published in various European languages under the auspices of METRO, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research at Maastricht University.This book examines the regulation of the inter-provincial establishment of companies in China and the EU regulation of the cross-border establishment of companies from the perspective of comparative law and economics. Part I of this book discusses the rules governing inter-provincial establishment in China and examines their implementation, with a focus on revealing the barriers to this activity. This part also analyses the evolution of the EU internal market and shows how the EU regulates the cross-border establishment of companies. Subsequently, Part II presents an economic analysis of the regulation of the crossborder establishment of companies in a multi-level jurisdiction. In Part III, the regulation of the inter-provincial establishment of companies in China is reviewed in the light of the economic literature. With the aim of examining whether China can learn something from the EUs experience with market integration, Part III also analyses the differences between the regulation of the inter-provincial establishment of companies in China and the EU regulation of the cross-border establishment of companies.This book offers a thorough analysis of the regulation of business establishment in China and, more generally, the law and economics literature on business licensing. Therefore, it is of interest for law and economics scholarship, companies doing business in China and policy makers responsible for regulating business establishment.

The French projet d'ordonnance, which reformed contract law, the general regime of obligations and the proof of obligations appeared in February 2015. One year later, in February 2016, the final version of the ordonnance was published. The ordonnance thoroughly reforms French contract law and the law of obligations and will enter into force in October 2016.This book results from the Contract Law Workshop of the 20th Ius Commune Conference held 26-27 November 2015. The theme of this Workshop was: 'The French Contract Law Reform: a Source of Inspiration?' Since the conference in November 2015, all authors have incorporated comments on the final version of the ordonnance. Whereas Van Loock briefly sketches the antecedents and the outcome of the reform, the other authors each tackle specific topics of the reform that surprised and/or excited the legal community. Pannebakker tackles the precontractual phase and assesses the attractiveness of the reform for international commercial transactions. Peeraer gives a critical overview of the doctrine of nullity in the ordonnance. Leone explores the potential impact of the 'significant imbalance' test in the new ordonnance on employment contracts. In their contributions, Lutzi and Oosterhuis discuss the much-debated provision that introduces the theory of imprvision. The contributions by Jansen and Verkempinck are both focused on remedies: the newly introduced price reduction remedy and damages. Storme criticises the new rules on set-off in the ordonnance, and Mah addresses the question why the final version of the ordonnance omitted the issue of interpersonal effects of fundamental rights on contractual freedom.

A book series devoted to the common foundations of the European legal systems, the Ius Commune Europaeum series includes comparative legal studies as well as studies on the effect of treaties within national legal systems. All areas of the law are covered. The books are published in various European languages under the auspices of METRO, the Institute for Transnational Legal Research at Maastricht University.This book contains an empirical study of the converging effects of the harmonisation policies used by the European lawmaker in consumer sales law. It aims to fill a gap in existing literature, by looking at what European consumer sales law harmonisation has achieved and by developing a methodology to measure the convergence it has led to. The work encompasses both a substantive comparison as well as a numerical approach.While in the former, five directives and their subsequent transposition in the national laws of Member States are analysed, the latter focuses on the creation of the Convergence Index as a measurement tool for the effects of the harmonisation process. The book will be useful to both academics as well as policy makers, as it aims to trigger further debate regarding benchmarking in European consumer law. Such debate will play a role in further academic research aimed at determining whether harmonisation does indeed strengthen the internal market.Catalina Goanta has conducted her doctoral research at the Maastricht European Private Law Institute (Maastricht University) under the supervision of Jan Smits and Caroline Cauffman, funded by the HiiL-UM Chair on the Internationalisation of Law.

In various European countries such as France, Italy, and the Netherlands, lawmakers have adopted legislation in order to deal with the consequences of the economic crisis. These laws contain provisions aimed at speeding up administrative decision making and judicial proceedings which have an impact on various provisions of general administrative law. Alongside the aim of facing the economic crisis, these measures aim to make administrative law more up-to-date and ensure it meets the needs of contemporary society.However, acceleration measures concerning decision-making and judicial proceedings may clash with the need to preserve the quality of these proceedings. On the one hand, swift procedures can be considered to be one aspect of high-quality decision making. On the other hand, other aspects of quality such as public participation and the thorough consideration of all relevant aspects and interests, may be at risk when the speed of decision-making is the only focus of reforms.Quality and Speed in Administrative Decision-Making: Tension or Balance? presents six national perspectives on these issues, together with a comparative overview comparing and contrasting national approaches with regards to finding a balance between the pace of proceedings and the quality of administrative and judicial decisions.The book will be of interest to academics of European and comparative administrative law, as well as policy-makers at the national and European level.

Letter of Intent in International Contracting provides readers with a unique point of reference on the legal effects of letter of intent the document frequently used in international transactions. Firstly, the book takes a fresh look at trade usages in negotiations of international contracts.It integrates the view of negotiations as strategies and tactics (well-known in business, but largely disregarded by the law) with the legal analysis. Secondly, it discusses in turn those provisions frequently used in letter of intent and comments on them based on a thorough comparative research of four jurisdictions: the Netherlands, France, England and Wales, and United States. The discussion of French law is based on the recent reform of the French law of obligations which significantly modified the French Code civil in 2016. At the international level, the study addresses the 1980 Vienna Convention on the International Sale of Goods and international soft law: UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts 2010, Principles of European Contract Law, and the Draft Common Frame of Reference. The book is a result of doctoral research conducted at the Erasmus University Rotterdam.This book is relevant to legal practitioners working in the field of international contracts as well as to scholars and policy makers concerned with harmonization of law based on non-binding principles and business practices.