This book evaluates the application of the first autonomous European civil procedures: the European Order for Payment and the European Small Claims Procedure.

This book examines the regulation of the inter-provincial establishment of companies in China and the EU regulation of the cross-border establishment of companies from the perspective of comparative law and economics.

This rise of a particular kind of European Union legislation known as the ‘optional instrument’ is a novel trend in the context of EU law, and one that until now has not been comprehensively mapped or explored. This study examines and discusses existing and proposed EU Optional Instruments (OIs) in different fields of European law, including company law, intellectual property law and procedural law (such as the European Company, the Community ...

In numerous fields of law, ranging from family law to company law, private actors increasingly set their own rules, revert to private enforcement of those rules and choose the applicable law.

Technological and economical developments require contracting parties to be informed and advised. This book analyses several aspects of these information and notification duties.

The international character of shipping and transport has always been a great incubator for harmonisation of law. Recently, there has been increasing interest within the EU in harmonisation of general private law, with different harmonisation instruments such as common core, PECL and DCFR coming into existence. In this book the possible impact of these private law harmonisation instruments on shipping and transport law is assessed.

There is an increasing debate on the way in which the EU has developed and what it must look like in the future. This debate includes a discussion on one of the core aspects of European integration: at which level should the rules be set and who decides where the authority to do so should lie? Private law has an important role to play in this discussion. Many private law rules touch on the core of the internal market as they serve to foster tr...

This is a book on comparative law and legal change. With a focus on corporate law and the law of personal property, it reviews the current state of the comparative debate on the evolution of law and seeks to establish new perspectives to explain the mechanism of legal reception.

Differences in contract law and the additional transaction costs and complexity they generate in cross-border transactions dissuade a considerable number SMEs from expanding into markets of other Member States. These differences are also said to limit competition in the internal market.