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COMMISSION TOLD "NO BACK-DOOR HARMONISATION OF BASIC LAW"
March 30, 2005 6:08 PM
Presenting her final report on the Rome II Regulation on the law applicable to non-contractual obligations today in Brussels, ALDE / Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis again slammed the Commission over its failure to present a coherent approach to this proposal and the Services Directive.
Ms Wallis said,
"It is clear that all basic tort and contract law will have to be removed from the application of the country of origin principle as set out in the Services Directive. The Services Directive is not the place to set up general rules on choice of law for cross border disputes. The Directive does not have the appropriate legal base to do this (Article 65) and even if it did, using country of origin as a choice of law rule would not help".
"If two enterprises clash they can't both have it their own way and use their own law. The principle just does not help in these cases. You have to be able to fall back on the traditional type of conflict rules which Rome II will provide."
"Some purists seem to think that the line taken in the Services Directive is the way to deal with one or two laws in countries like Germany which has laws they like to categorise as protectionist. If that is the case they should have the guts to tackle them head-on, not by requiring the whole of the EU to contemplate some sort of bizarre and ill-thought out back door harmonisation of our entire body of private law."
"I am more and more convinced that the Commission has just failed to think this through and continues to bury its head in the sand by failing to give a clear definition of country of origin which works for both the Services Directive and Rome II."
Ends
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