Memo: Commission welcomes European Parliament Committee support for an optional Common European Sales Law

The European Commission welcomed the draft report from the European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) backing optional EU-wide rules for businesses and consumers who are concluding contracts in the Single Market.

In their draft report, the co-rapporteurs of the European Parliament Legal Affairs Committee, Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Klaus-Heiner Lehne and MEP Luigi Berlinguer, backed the Commission’s proposal for a Common European Sales Law. An optional EU-wide contract law would promote growth by making it cheaper for businesses to access new markets and offering consumers a greater choice of products at more competitive prices.

It would promote the Digital Single Market by providing a coherent set of rules for the marketing of digital products and related services which may also apply when some of these products are provided using the Cloud. The JURI Committee is due to vote on the report in the coming months.

The European Parliament Legal Affairs Committee co-rapporteurs suggest in their report to limit the scope of the Common European Sales Law to distance contracts, notably online contracts. Given the need to complete the Digital Single Market this restriction of scope in the JURI rapporteurs' opinion suggests that the core added value of this optional instrument lies in the field of online business.