RICERCA ITALIANA     

THE COMMON CORE OF EUROPEAN PRIVATE LAW IN THE 'ENLARGED' EUROPE

Università degli Studi di Trieste

Abstract

The programme is directed at three main research fields.
Firstly –coherently with the pluriannual experience of the "Common Core Project of The European Private Law", which has been awarded a European grant for High–level Scientific Conferences (HPCF–CT–1999–00211) for the organization of the general meeting in Trento, the program uses the comparative method (factual approach, dissociation of legal formants, economic analysis of the data) in order to complete the mapping process of European private law, also referring to the so-called "post-socialist" countries (historically deeply affected by Roman law: R. Sacco) which recently joined the EU as well as to the Eastern and the other Mediterranean countries which will join the EU in the future. For these countries any activity of data collection, in particular any individuation of legal rules of private patrimonial law, has been lacking research on a large scale and also a study conducted using the modern comparative method.
Secondly, the programme aims at providing a comprehensive explanation for the results achieved until today by the research. This means that the use of the comparative method will not be limited – from today onwards – to providing a reliable map of European private law, but it will point out the possible operative meanings that the available data (as well as the data we are currently collecting) may have in the building of European private law. In other words, the methodology of our project >>>

Principal Investigator

Mauro BUSSANI Università degli Studi di TRIESTE

Research Objectives

The programme is a necessary continuation of the well–established research experience of the project "The Common Core of The European Private Law".
Through the involvement of other faculties with a long-standing expertise in comparative law and the contribution of almost two hundred Italian and foreign scholars, the project aims at the definition of the rules and principles that constitute the common core of all the European legal systems, through an analytical study of the main areas of private patrimonial law (conventionally divided in the broad categories of Contract, Tort and Property). The project aims also at the evaluation – through comparative economic analysis – of the impact of European integration on the different national laws.
Particularly, the purpose of the research programme may be defined as follows:
A) Firstly, the research aims at continuing and completing the collection of data which form the common core of European private law. In this phase, specific attention will be devoted to the way of applying the method based on the factual approach and on the dissociation of the legal formants particularly to the legal experience of the "post-socialist" countries whose joining the EU is imminent. In these systems, comparative law scholarship has not yet started to study with a coherent method and on a large scale in order to unearth their principles and their rules, from which it should be possible to get solutions that are consistent with >>>

Timescale

24 months

National and international background

The programme is based on a well–established research experience which has been developed in several years (since 1993) by the "Common Core of European Private Law" ("Il Nucleo Commune del Diritto Privato Europeo"). During the year 2005 the eleventh general meeting of this group of research will be held, as usual, at the University of Trento, on June, 9-11. It is well-known that this project brings together nearly two hundred scholars coming from all the EU member states, the Eastern European and Mediterranean countries, and also from the US and Canada and has been awarded an European grant for High–level Scientific Conferences (HPCF–CT–1999–00211) for the organization of the general meetings in Trento.
Through the use of the factual approach, developed by R.B. Schlesinger in the '50s and '60s in the study of the "common core" in the formation of contracts, and through the analysis of legal formants, developed by R. Sacco, it is possible to produce a comparative analysis able to measure the degree of convergence or divergence among different legal systems, thereby eliminating false analogies or differences produced by mere formal descriptions deriving from the juxtaposition of analysis of the individual system made by every (national) scholar. For this purpose questionnaires concerning specific problems in the three main areas of private patrimonial law (conventionally distinguished in Tort, Contract and Property) are continuously drafted and distributed among the >>>