Harmony of the legal spheres

In: European Review of Private Law, Band 5, Heft 1, S. 11-46

Abstract

The Storme Commission has published a proposal for a Directive on harmonisation of certain aspects of civil procedure. This initiative is to be welcomed as promoting discussion of the need for and problems of harmonisation, but provides no definitive solutions. The European Union probably has competence to legislate in this area, provided that the harmonisation measures adopted do in fact facilitate the development of the single market. The risk is that partial harmonisation will not achieve this objective but will instead lead to greater complexity because of the need to deal with the interaction between harmonised and non-harmonised rules. An analysis of the Storme Commission proposals demonstrates that they leave considerable uncertainty as to the remaining role of national laws, and that they would not gain universal acceptance because they would conflict with the approach adopted in some jurisdictions.