EuSoCo

Hamburg/Trento 15th of May 2016
Newsletter 1.2016

Dear friends

Our next meeting will now definetely take place at the University of Luxembourg for Friday September 30, 2016. It will have a significant francophone participation. The website for this event is already functional at http://wwwfr.uni.lu/recherche/fdef/life_time_contracts.

This meeting will focus on horizontal studies of LTCs and start with a session on the collective dimension in labour and consumer contracts. The digital economy is an important challenge for LTCs. We will study its impact on labour contracts and implications for LTCs as a whole in session two.

The developments into a credit society will be studied in session 3.

A round table on LTCs for general EU-contract law will conclude the discussions of our meeting in Luxembourg.

Before some of us will meet at the annual conference for financial services in Hamburg dedicated to the issue of “Digitalisation of the Bank-Customer-Relationship” June 2, 2016. Practioners and three members of EuSoCo will discuss similarities and principles in legal protection against early termination of labour, tenancy and consumer credit contracts in Plenary 2. (http://www.iff-hamburg.de/index.php?id=3273)

There is an interesting “International Conference: Uniform rules for European Contract Law?” in Spain at IE University in Segovia Spain on June 23, 2016 subtitled “a critical assessment”. Regrettably our critique of a far too uniform understanding of contract law itself is not part of this assessment which assumes that the sales law approach in contract law is sufficient to represent contract law as such. At least LTCs or its components are not mentioned in the titles. (http://www.jeanmonnet.privatelaw.ie.edu/conference/)

“The European Contract Law in the Digital Age” is the title of the meeting of the Association of the Society of European Contract Law (SECOLA) in Tartu, Finland on June 17/18 2016. (www.secola.voog.com) It deals with the digital form of contracts as well as with digital contents. Is digitalisation the same when used in spot contracts as in relational contracts? It would be tempting to bring the Hamburg and Tartu discussion together to see whether digitalisation is truly the problem or just an instrument which makes underlying problems more visible.

There are two important events which regrettably are scheduled at the same day as our Luxembourg seminar. Our member Prof. Olha Cherednychenko inaugurates her Groningen Centre for European Financial Services Law with a conference in Amsterdam entitled “Towards Sustainable Financial Services in the EU: Making Sense of the Trend”. (http://www.rug.nl/research/groningen-centre-for-law-and-governance/onderzoekscentra/gcefsl/?lang=en) We have been further informed that on the same date there is also a meeting of the Social Justice Group which prevents some of our members to come. Anyhow such activities are a good sign for our quest.

While there are many activities the interest for publication has obviously ceased after the political EU withdraw from the idea of a European codification of general contract law. We found besides ordinary case books on contracts the following books on contract theory in the EU: Jacobien W.; Sirena, Pietro (Hg.) (2015): Rules and principles in European contract law. SECOLA Conference. Cambridge: Intersentia (European contract law and theory, 1) and Schulze, Reiner; Zoll, Fryderyk (2016): European contract law. First Edition where they the foundations of the DCFR are again summarised underpinned with a uniform concept of a sales contract fit for all.

Anyhow the enormous interest and activities with regard to the the future of contract law seems to support us in our limitattion to focus on LTCs and the use of capital than including contracts for ownership of property rights. The differences are perhaps more visible in civil law than in common law where the use of capital is often just renamed a the acquisition of a property right which disguises the gradual replacement of property (dominium) by use (utilitas). Legal forms for the recently detected share economy are thus difficult to develop.

We would like to invite all of you already to an EuSoCo meeting the day before September 29 Thursday from 5 to 7 pm in order to speak about our new discussion paper series, the three horizontal working groups which have been founded, future events and publications and in order to exchange our knowledge on ongoing developments and furhter scientific cooperation in research and teaching among us. We may then continue informally at a pub or restaurant nearby.

Kind regards

Luca Nogler (Trento), Luca Ratti (Luxembourg), Udo Reifner (Hamburg)