On 26 and 27 October, the Groningen Centre for Law and Governance (GCL) organises a conference on the theme of 'Public policy, good morals and social justice in European private law':
'The focus of the session on Friday will be social-justice-inspired
interpretations and applications of legal concepts of public policy and
good morals as limitations to the validity of contracts and other acts
of private autonomy (e.g. testaments). For what concerns contract law,
the EU Commission, at least for the time being, does not seem to be
willing to include a norm over immoral contracts or contracts contrary
to public policy in its proposed Regulation on a Common European Sales
Law (CESL). In the CESL preparatory works, a norm over
illegality/immorality was proposed by scholars but this was not included
in the Commission draft. Does this mean that there will be no European
harmonisation of interpretations and applications of private law
concepts of public policy and good morals altogether? Will this playing
field for socio-economic justice in contract law remain the domain of
national law? Or could perhaps some sort of European harmonisation take
place through horizontal governance, especially horizontal judicial
governance? A spontaneous, step-by-step convergence could be fostered by
increasing judicial cooperation, especially if public policy and
immorality norms are interpreted and applied in the light of the common
European fundamental rights.
The Saturday session will be a round table on the comparison of the interpretation and application of public policy rules in private law, private international law and primary EU law in the light of EU fundamental rights and principles of social justice.'
The Saturday session will be a round table on the comparison of the interpretation and application of public policy rules in private law, private international law and primary EU law in the light of EU fundamental rights and principles of social justice.'
More information regarding the programme will follow shortly on the conference website.
Conference visitors interested in questions of European private law might want to combine this event with (a part of) the Maastricht conference on 'EU law and the private sphere' that was announced on this blog earlier.
