Luca Nogler, Udo Reifner

Der menschliche Makel – Principles of European Contract Law zwischen Merkantil- und Dienstleistungsgesellschaft

Inhaltsübersicht: 1. Einleitung. – 2. Die Freiheit vom Menschen – Merkantiles Arbeitsrecht – 3. Der geschützte Mensch: das soziale Arbeitsrecht als privatrechtliche Herausforderung in Europa. – 4. Der menschliche Makel im Zivilrecht. – 5. Vom Arbeitsrecht zum Verbraucherschutz. – 6. Der menschliche Makel im Allgemeinen Vertragsrecht – 7. Kauf und Miete im Vergleich – 8. Principles of European Contract Law zwischen Merkantil und Dienstleistungsgesellschaft.

Der menschliche Makel

It is strange that the previous link to contract law on the Consumers part of the Commision’s website is no longer working and the documents no longer available on the SANCO website. The document from 2001 is nevertheless reproduced here in German.

Stellungnahmen Zur Mitteilung Über Das Europäische Vertragsrecht (2001)

Nach der Veröffentlichung der Mitteilung zum europäischen Vertragsrecht haben der Rat und das Europäische Parlament im November 2001 zu der Mitteilung Stellung genommen. Ferner sind bei der Kommission _ bislang _ 160 Beiträge aus interessierten Kreisen eingegangen (siehe Anlagen). Dieses Interesse der Gemeinschaftsorgane und betroffener Kreise zeigt, wie wichtig die mit der Mitteilung ausgelöste Debatte ist.

Schlüsselt man die Beiträge nach Herkunftsländern auf, so ist bemerkenswert, dass die meisten Beiträge aus Deutschland und dem Vereinigten Königreich stammen. Aus einigen Mitgliedstaaten sind gar keine oder nur wenige Beiträge eingegangen. Zahlreiche internationale Interessengruppen haben sich ebenfalls an der Anhörung beteiligt. Die meisten Beiträge kommen aus Hochschul- und Wirtschaftskreisen, doch haben sich auch viele Vertreter der Rechtspraxis beteiligt. (mehr …)

Preliminary remark: This is a paper on the many faces of social justice in private law. It intends to highlight the differences between the Member States’ concepts of social justice which now clash with a particular European concept. The aim of the paper is not meant, however, to defend national cultures and traditions per se. It aims at analysing the ongoing changes which should force us in light of the ‘intuitively felt cracks in civil society’ to rethink national patterns of social justice and maybe social justice as such. Emphasis is laid on private law.

The Member States have developed over the last century their proper model of social justice in private law. Each model is inherently linked to national culture and tradition. However, all models have in common that it is for the (social welfare) state to use the law as a means to protect the weaker party against the stronger party, the employee against the employer, the tenant against the landlord and the consumer against the supplier. Social justice is therefore bound to the idea of redistribution of wealth from the richer to the poorer part of the society. It is here where the idea of social welfare state is located. (mehr …)

Abstract:

A scheme describing six welfarist directions in modern contract law is used to assess the extent to which current European measures that affect contract law have embraced these welfarist developments. Although some EC legislation may be interpreted as possessing elements of a limited welfarist perspective, it is concluded that bolder welfarist strands have proved largely absent. A European civil code or contract code would prove too static an instrument to promote the evolution of further welfarist developments.

Blunt Dichotomies on Contractual Values

The issue of social justice in contract law has finally been brought more clearly back on the agenda in the debate on harmonisation of European contract law. As such, the social justice issue is of course not new. Even contract literature from decades ago swells with descriptions and analyses of the changes in contract law towards a greater inclusion of other social values than purely market-oriented, liberal ones. In the present situation, those old ideas, as well as more recent reformulations, retain their actuality. The focus on harmonisation in the debate of today, however, requires a representation of the ideas in some new clothing.
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Article by Fritz W. Scharpf from the Max-Planck-Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne

Abstract

European integration has created a constitutional asymmetry between policies promoting market efficiencies and policies promoting social protection and equality. National welfare states are legally and economically constrained by European rules of economic integration, liberalization and competition law, whereas efforts to adopt European social policies are politically impeded by the diversity of national welfare states, differing not only in levels of economic development and hence in their ability to pay for social transfers and services but, even more significantly, in their normative aspirations and institutional structures. In response, the ‘open method of coordination’ is now being applied in the social-policy field. It leaves effective policy choices at the national level, but tries to improve these through promoting common objectives and common indicators, and through comparative evaluations of national policy performance. These efforts are useful but cannot overcome the constitutional asymmetry. Hence there is reason to search for solutions which must have the character of European law in order to establish constitutional parity with the rules of European economic integration, but which also must be sufficiently differentiated to accommodate the existing diversity of national welfare regimes. The article discusses two such options, ‘closer co-operation’ and a combination of differentiated ‘framework directives’ with the open method of co-ordination.

Click here to read The European Social Model: Coping with the Challenges of Diversity (Fritz W. Scharpf, JCMS 2002)