Lloyd's Maritime and Commercial Law Quarterly
ASSIGNMENT IN THE COMMISSION’S “ROME I PROPOSAL”
Rick Verhagen *
The European Commission has, in its “Proposal for a Regulation on the law applicable to contractual obligations”, formulated a new conflict rule, referring the transfer of receivables by way of assignment to the law of the assignor’s residence. In this article, it is argued that this conflict rule is inadequate for receivables-based cross-border transactions. The Commission’s proposal is compared with a solution that is currently prevailing in a number of EU Member States (eg, United Kingdom and Germany), which refers assignment to the law applicable to the assigned claim. This conflict rule compares favourably with the one proposed by the Commission. It is further argued that an even better solution would be to allow party autonomy in this area.
1. Introduction
The assignment of contractual rights is of immense importance for the world of business and finance.1
Although the sale of receivables has ancient origins (it already happened in classical Rome), its economic significance has increased enormously in the last decades,
* HLE Verhagen, Professor of Private International Law, Comparative Law and Civil Law, Radboud University Nijmegen; Advocate, Clifford Chance, Amsterdam.
1. The following abbreviations are used in these footnotes:
Eidenmüller, Horst Eidenmüller “Die Dogmatik der Zession vor dem Hintergrund der internationalen Entwicklung”, Archiv für die civilistische Praxis 2004
, 457–501.
Flessner/Verhagen: Axel Flessner and Hendrik (Rick) Verhagen, Assignment in European Private International Law, Claims as property and the European Commission’s ‘Rome I Proposal’
(München, 2006).
Kieninger, Rome I: Eva-Maria Kieninger, “Brussels I, Rome I and Questions Relating to Assignment and Subrogation”, in: Johan Meeusen et al (eds), Enforcement of international contracts in the European Union, Convergence and divergence between Brussels I and Rome I
(Antwerp etc., 2004) 363–387.
Kieninger, Statut: Eva-Maria Kieninger, “Das Statut der Forderungsabtretung im Verhältnis zu Dritten”, RabelsZ 1998
, 679–711.
Kieninger/Schütze: Eva-Maria Kieninger and Elisabeth Schütze, “Die Forderungsabtretung im internationalen Privatrecht—Bringt die ‘Rom I—Verordnung’ ein ‘Ende der Geschichte’?”, IPRax 2005
, 200–208.
Lagarde: Paul Lagarde, Retour sur la loi applicable à l’opposabilité des transferts conventionnels de créncese
(Mélanges Jacques Béguin, 2005), 415–432.
Mäsch, Gerld Mäsch, “Abtretung und Legalzession im Europäischen kollissionsrecht” in: Stefan Leible (ed), Das Grünbuch, zum Internationalen Vertragsrecht
(München, 2004), 193–208.
Max-Planck-Institut: Max-Planck-Institut für ausländisches und internationales Privatrecht, “Comments on the European Commission’s Green Paper on the conversion of the Rome Convention of 1980 on the law applicable to contractual obligations into a Community instrument and its modernization”, RabelsZ 2004, 1–118.
Stoll: Hans Stoll, “Die Forderungsabtretung im internationalen Privatrecht. Eine Studie zur Vereinheitlichung des Kollisionsrecht in Europa”, in: Leszek Ogieglo, Wojciech Popiolek, Maciej Szpunar (eds.), Rozprawy prawnicze
(Ksiega pamiatkowa Profesora Maksymiliana Pazdana, Kraków, 2005), 307–321.
Struycken: Teun HD Struycken, “The proprietary aspects of international assignment of debts and the Rome Convention, Article 12” [1998] LMCLQ 345–360.
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