The recently proposed Common European Sales Law is intended to overcome differences between national contract laws. 19 chapters, co-authored by British and German scholars, investigate for the first time how the projected CESL would interact with various aspects of English and German law.

This book presents a complete and coherent view of the subject of Common European Sales Law from a range of European perspectives. The book offers a comparison of the CESL with the CISG, as well as pre-existing instruments, including the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) and the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL). It analyses the process of enactment of CESL and its scope of application, covering areas such as the sale of goods, the supplying (licensing) of digital content, the supply of trade-related services, and consumer protection. It examines the design of the CESL bifurcating businesses into large and small-to-medium sized enterprises, and the providing of rules covering digital content and the supply of trade-related services. Lastly, it studies the field of application of the CESL combined with the already existing EU consumer protection laws, as well as nation-specific laws.​

This book presents a critical analysis of the rules on the contents and effects of contracts included in the proposal for a Common European Sales Law (CESL). The European Commission published this proposal in October 2011 and then withdrew it in December 2014, notwithstanding the support the proposal had received from the European Parliament in February 2014. On 6 May 2015, in its Communication ‘A Digital Single Market Strategy for Europe’, the Commission expressed its intention to “make an amended legislative proposal (...) further harmonising the main rights and obligations of the parties to a sales contract”. The critical comments and suggestions contained in this book, to be understood as lessons to learn from the CESL, intend to help not only the Commission but also other national and supranational actors, both public and private (including courts, lawyers, stakeholders, contract parties, academics and students) in dealing with present and future European and national instruments in the field of contract law. The book is structured into two parts. The first part contains five essays exploring the origin, the ambitions and the possible future role of the CESL and its rules on the contents and effects of contracts. The second part contains specific comments to each of the model rules on the contents and effects of contracts laid down in Chapter 7 CESL (Art. 66-78). Together, the essays and comments in this volume contribute to answering the question of whether and to what extent rules such as those laid down in Art. 66-78 CESL could improve or worsen the position of consumers and businesses in comparison to the correspondent provisions of national contract law. The volume adopts a comparative perspective focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on German and Dutch law.

The present essay continues a line of research commenced elsewhere in that it analyses two rules contained in the Chapter on "Damages and Interest" in the Draft Common European Sales Law (CESL) in comparative and historical perspective. Even though the CESL has now been withdrawn, it still constitutes the last of several different "layers" of European and international instruments aiming at the harmonization of contract law and thus deserves to be scrutinized critically. The two rules deal with "Substitute transaction" and "Current price" (Art. 164 and 165). In addition, the essay deals with a third rule ("Currency in which damages may be claimed"), which is contained in previous layers of text, but has not been adopted into the CESL. The path of each of these rules is followed through the various instruments, and it is attempted to assess their specific profile by drawing attention to the national experiences and the comparative legal literature. A revision is suggested both as far as Art. 164 and 165 are concerned.

In October 2011, the European Commission introduced its Proposal for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law (CESL) which covers inter alia international business sales – a subject already regulated by the Convention of International Sale of Goods (CISG) which was ratified by 78 member states. How does this new Proposal fit the existing uniform sales law? How have other regions of the world managed the coexistence of global and regional sales law unification? What can Europe learn from the U.S. experience concerning the CISG and the Uniform Commercial Code? What can we learn from the African OHADA which made CISG more or less the internal law of 17 African states, what from Australia where CISG and common law exist alongside? All these questions are intensely discussed in this highly recommendable book written by renowned authors like Larry DiMatteo, Harry Flechtner, Franco Ferrari, Robert Koch, Ulrich Magnus and Bruno Zeller.

The emergence of European Contract Law as a field of enquiry has been matched by a burgeoning literature. This includes textbooks, casebooks, monographs and commentaries as well as at least one journal and huge number of journal articles. As the field has matured, so has its elaboration and analysis by scholars, though it remains a field replete with contested viewpoints and many controversies. This new work by one of Germany's most well-known and respected private law scholars, seeks to present a complete and coherent view of the subject from the perspective of the jurisdiction which has arguably had more responsibility than any other for influencing the shape and content of European contract law

"A legal-political inquiry into the drafting of the uniform commercial code, the Vienna Sales Convention, the Dutch civil code and the European consumer sales directive in the context of the Europeanization of contract law."--T.p.