Abstract:
Current EU law does not assure the protection of the private rights on which the functioning of a market is usually thought to depend, at least in part. Nor does it provide even the most elementary guidance concerning the conduct that is expected from agents in the internal market. Whether unfair exploitations, frauds, breaches of contract, or the enforcement of contracts after a radical change of circumstances are permitted in the internal market, remains almost entirely for national law to decide. This paper argues that the EU, given its advanced stage of integration, in particular its internal market, is in need of a set of principles defining basic private rights, as a matter of justice. Such a European system of private rights is required as part of the internal market’s basic structure, i.e. the institutional framework providing background justice for internal market transactions. The paper discusses and rejects three potential challenges based on different divisions of labour, as a result of which it would seem to follow that private law has no role to play in assuring justice in the internal market, and concludes by outlining how we might understand a political conception of (sufficiently) just conduct in the internal market.
Hesselink, Martijn W, Unjust Conduct in the Internal Market. On the Role of European Private Law in the Division of Moral Responsibility between the EU, its Member States and their Citizens (December 1, 2014). Centre for the Study of European Contract Law Working Paper Series No 2014-14; Amsterdam Law School Research Paper No 2014-63.
First posted 2014-12-03 07:27:45
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