The Law Applicable to Contracts in the European Union - A Competition Between Rome I Regulation, Other Sources of EU Law and Directive Law as Implemented

Abstract

EU private international law ("PIL") was significantly different before the recent private international law boom. Before 1998, there had been only fragmented and miscellaneous conflict-of-laws provisions in the acquis communautaire, focusing on specific areas. Most provisions were to be found in directives dealing with substantive law, i.e. the conflict-of-laws rules were merely extensions to the regulations in certain areas. Adopting such rules was common in the fields of consumer protection (i.e. consumer contract law) and insurance law. The article tries to summarize these rules and analyse their connection with the latest law, i.e. with the provisions of the Rome regulation on the law applicable to contracts.

Keywords: Rome I regulation, consumer law, labour law, conflict-of-laws, private international law, sales law

JEL Classification: K12, K2, K20