The United Kingdom is not a Contracting State to the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG or the Vienna Convention). The UK has, of course, adopted the earlier Uniform Law for the International Sale of Goods (ULIS), but it differs from the later Convention in requiring the parties to contract in, which they seem generally reluctant to do. United Kingdom lawyers may well take the view, therefore, that unification of international sales law is not something with which they need to be concerned.

However, as the authors of Understanding the CISG in Europe observe: “More than 40 countries, accounting for two-thirds of all world trade, have ratified the Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods. In Europe and elsewhere, the age of internationalization and the global market is upon us, and the CISG sets the ground rules for international contracts of sale.” Elsewhere, they assert that “the CISG is fast becoming the sales law of the world”. They also discuss the possibility of the CISG applying anyway, whether or not the parties have a place of