EU businesses not enthusiastic about mandatory code

One of the insights of the Legal Realists is that a law of commercial transactions ought to take into account what business people really want.  So with all this talk of a pan-European contract law across the EU — do European businesses want it?

Well, yes and no, according to a new survey of 175 businesses in eight countries by London’s Clifford Chance.  Some 65 percent of respondents say that there are still problems with cross-border transactions, and a majority would favor some kind of EU contract law, but only if it’s optional.  Only 20 percent of respondents favored a new EU law that would displace existing national contract laws for cross-border transactions, because they would still prefer to specify their own domestic law.  That figure varied greatly from country to country, though — 97 percent of British businesses prefer U.K. law, while only 43 percent of those in the Netherlands do.