Service Contracts

Abstract

Services have since long been an underdeveloped area of law. Neither at the national nor at the European level a coherent body of services contract law exists. The Principles of European Law on Service Contracts (hereafter: PEL SC), published in 2007, hope to fill the void at least to some extent. The PEL SC have been developed through the cooperative efforts of European legal scholars and set out a number of rules – for now without legal status – which could form the framework for contractual relationships entered into within the European Union by clients and service providers in the widest sense of the word. The PEL SC have been taken over, with some amendments, in Book IV.C of the draft-Common Frame of Reference (draft-CFR). This paper compares the two instruments, discussing the scope and conflict rules, the determination and calculation of the price, the duties to warn and to co-operate and, finally, the question whether the service provider is under an obligation of means or under an obligation of result and the matter of remedies for non-performance.

Keywords: European private law, contract law, European civil code, service contracts