A triple braid : interactions between international law, EU law, and private law

This chapter sets out to provide a context for the following chapters by tracing the interlocking relations which are at the heart of this book: between the EU, its Member States and international legal regimes; between EU private law (both traditional and regulatory), the international treaties of the Member States and the EU’s external treaty law. These different legal sources each have their own dynamic and have evolved over time; here we are interested in the way that they interact with each other to create the dynamic which this book seeks to explore: the increasing role of the EU in the international dimension of private law - including international regulatory private law - and the corresponding impact this has on ‘domestic’ (national and EU) private law. The approach of this chapter is conceptual rather than substantive: we will explore the interactions between these legal sources from two different perspectives. The first demonstrates the evolution of practice and law over time so as to gain an understanding of the genesis of the rather complex picture we now see. The second addresses the legal principles handling the relationships and conflict situations which have emerged in practice. This will give an idea of the legal tools available to handle the more specific procedural and substantive issues which will be explored in subsequent chapters