Introduction

In 1967 the Benelux countries invited the European Commission to consider the possibility of the unification of the rules of private international law of the Member States of the Common Market. A group of legal experts—the “Brussels Working Group”—was accordingly convened to consider the matter. The initial opinion was that the unification of such rules generally was a too ambitious and lengthy undertaking, but that the harmonization of the rules in certain areas, especially those applicable to contractual and non-contractual obligations, would facilitate the working of the “Common Market”. The group was then charged with the task of preparing a series of draft conventions to meet this end.

In 1972 the group completed a preliminary draft on the law applicable to contractual and non-contractual obligations, and this was submitted to the Governments of the Member States for their consideration. Following the enlargement of the community, the three new Member States were invited to express their views on the draft, legal experts from these States joining the original group. In 1976 the EEC Preliminary Draft Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual and Non-Contractual Obligations was prepared. However, in 1978 the group decided to limit the scope of their task to a convention on contractual obligations initially and to deal with non-contractual obligations subsequently in a separate convention.

This article proposes to consider the EEC Convention on the Law Applicable to Contractual Obligations 1 which was presented by the group in 1979 for consideration by the Member States. Comments from the Member States were considered during the spring of 1980 and the Convention was opened for signature in Rome on June 19, 1980. It has now been signed by all the Member States except the United Kingdom and Denmark. Discussions are continuing as to whether the European Court of Justice should be given jurisdiction over the Convention in order to provide a means for uniform interpretation.

The Convention will be implemented by the national legislation of those Member States which accede to it. If adopted by the U.K. it will largely replace the present English, Scottish and Northern Irish choice of law rules for contracts.2 The Convention