Identifying the legal costs of operation of the Common European Sales Law

This article forms part of a special edition of the Common Market Law Review.

Publishers Abstract:
The European Commission sees the fundamental purpose of the Proposal for a Common European Sales Law (CESL) as economic, rather than social or political: the facilitation of cross-border trade within the EU. While the Commission realizes that there are other obstacles facing cross-border traders, the Proposal's concern is to deal with the "legal obstacles" created by the diversity of national contract laws.

The author does not seek to deny the existence of the costs as identified by the Commission; rather he wishes to consider the other side of the equation by identifying the costs incurred by traders if parties to cross-border contracts of sale of goods were able to be governed by the CESL in the way which the Commission envisages. In his view, these costs can be grouped under three headings: the legal framework into which the CESL is set; the relative uncertainty of the concepts; and the impact of national judicial evaluations in the application of the CESL.