The objective is to ensure that courts of all Member States
apply the same law to cross-border disputes on non-contractual
obligations, thus facilitating the mutual recognition of judicial
decisions throughout the European Union.
António Vitorino, Commisionner for Justice and Home Affairs,
said:
"As long as the solution of disputes in such
an important matter is subject to differences from one Member State
to another for the mere reason that their courts apply different
laws, there will be no genuine area of justice in Europe."
Rome II will determine which laws apply in cases of, for
example, defamation, unfair competition, pollution or defectiveness
of products. In cases of defamation, the law applicable shall be
the law of the country where the victim is habitually resident at
the time. In cases of unfair competition, the law shall be that of
the country where the unfair competition affects competitive
relations or consumers.
At this stage, the Member States have no common rules on the law
applicable to such obligations. Thus solutions may vary from one
Member State to another and the parties may be incited to choose to
sue another party in the court that they believe will apply the law
which is the most favourable to them, a practice known as "forum
shopping".
The jurisdiction of courts and the recognition and enforcement
of judgements given in another Member State are already the subject
of the Regulation on jurisdiction and the recognition and
enforcement of judgements in civil and commercial matters, which
applies to both contractual and non-contractual obligations. With
respect of choice of law rules applicable to contracts, they have
been harmonised in the 1980 Rome Convention on the law applicable
to contractual obligations. Also, the present initiative will
complete the harmonisation at Community level of private
international law rules with respect of civil and commercial
obligations.
This is not the first consultation on Rome II. Last year, after
an initial consultation, the Commission commented that further
consultation would be “a waste of taxpayers’ money”.
Comments can be sent before 15th September 2002 to
Directorate-General for Justice and Home Affairs at JAI-coop-jud-civil@cec.eu.int
