A Common European Law of Sales?

The paper deals with the prospects of a European sales law after the 2007 Commission's Green Paper on the Review of Consumer Acquis. The Commission Green Paper's proposal of a "horizontal instrument" on consumer sales is analysed. The Author highlights a number of problematic aspects of the Green Paper's approach with concrete examples and suggests that the general approach to sales law taken by the Draft Common Frame of Reference on a European Contract Law (DCFR) should be preferred. In the DCFR the provisions on sales are embedded in a more general regulatory framework of contract and obligation law, as well as adjoining subject-matters such as non-contractual liability and restitutions. This approach has the merit of taking well-settled, internationally developed existing uniform rules into account and filling in the gaps of current European legislation in a more coherent way.[...