European Contract Law

Stefan Vogenauer from Oxford Law Faculty and Professor Gerhard Dannemann from the Berlin Humboldt University were funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and Deutsche Forschungs-Gemeinschaft from October 2009 to September 2012. Stefan is now Professor at the Max Planck Institute.

The European Commission released its Proposal for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law (CESL) on 11 October 2011. The proposal was the culmination of a series of documents aimed at harmonising contract law across the European Union and would, if enacted, enable parties to sales contracts to select CESL as the law governing their relationship.

A three-year project on European contract law, run by Professor Stefan Vogenauer from Oxford University’s Faculty of Law and Professor Gerhard Dannemann from the Berlin Humboldt University was concluded successfully in September 2012. The project was funded by the Arts and Humanities Council and the Deutsche Forschungs-gemeinschaft and involved some 40 scholars form the UK and Germany.

It analysed the interaction of a (potential) optional European instrument establishing a uniform legal framework for cross-border contracts with the laws, particularly the contract laws of England and Germany.

The results of the project were published by Oxford University Press in early 2013: G Dannemann and S Vogenauer (eds), The Common European Sales Law in Context: Interactions with English and German Law. The book has over 20 chapters, each of them co-authored by an English and a German contributor, on various issues of contract law, ranging from formation to remedies.