Marshalswick South Focus Team

Councillors, Rod Perks and Allan Witherick working with Andrew Duff MEP and Melvyn Teare for you Learn more

Support for European contract law is boost for internal market

by awitherick on 24 April, 2011

The European Parliament’s Legal Affairs Committee (JURI) have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a draft report on European contract law which is aimed at strengthening cross-border competition and opening up the full potential of the EU’s internal market for businesses and consumers.
Commenting after the vote, ALDE/Liberal Democrat MEP Diana Wallis, who drafted the report on policy options for progress towards a European Contract law, said:

At the moment, businesses, in particular small and medium sized ones, are discouraged from engaging in cross-border trade because of the divergences in national contract law.

“Today’s vote was an important step towards introducing a simplified and flexible optional instrument which will enlarge the choice of parties when drawing up contracts, provide legal certainty across borders and can be put in place relatively quickly. This could be a real contribution to the Commission’s ‘justice for growth’ programme to get the EU towards its 20/20 economic goals.”

“Retailers and consumers alike will be able to benefit from a flexible European contract law option. It is important now to ensure that any new rules created are simple, comprehensible and ready for use.”

Why is it important for the UK?  Well our own UK Federation of Small Businesses have calculated that it would cost a business an amount of € 15,000 to enter the market of another Member State (legal fees, translation fees and implementation fees).

   Leave a comment

Leave a Reply

You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>