EUROPEAN PRIVATE LAW

The goal of the course is to sharpen awareness about the importance of legal studies aimed at crossing the cultural and linguistic barriers, which restrain from a real European integration.

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Knowledge and understanding: the course provides advanced knowledge and analytical resources that extend and enhance the understanding of private law and in particular give a basis for originality in developing and applying ideas and in understanding the solutions provided by a common frame of reference of the European private law. Applying knowledge and understanding: The students will be able to apply uniform models to cross-national case studies in the context of Europeanisation; we expect students to be able to understand and analyse concrete cases and solve problems, going beyond the solutions offered by national systems and thinking in the light of European private law. Making judgements: We expect the students to have the ability to integrate knowledge and handle complexity, and formulate judgments with incomplete or limited information. Communications Skills: This course will give the students the possibility to acquire and understand major terms and concepts in order to communicate their ideas, proposals, analysis and critical reasoning in the field of private law in the most effective and appropriate way. Learning skills: This module will contribute to empower learners giving them the tools to analyse concrete cases and solve problems in the field of private law, crossing the cultural and linguistic barriers which restrain from a real European integration.

The subject-matter of the course is the process of harmonization of European Private Law and its recent developments. The module starts with the analysis of the legal tools put in place to provide a common discipline at European level in the Private Law sector. In particular, the analysis will start with the study of Consumer Law at EU level. It then will go through the structure and the contents of the UNIDROIT Principles. Finally, Principles of European Contract Law and the Draft Common Frame of Reference will be analyzed. These latter were born from the initiative of a group of EU Member States’ scholars, who went along with the European Commission’s urging, and drafted a document that, starting from EU ius receptum (the so-called “acquis communautaire”), is addressed to promote knowledge and improvement of the uniform private law, through the elaboration of fundamental principles, definitions and model rules. A specific focus will be on the notion of electronic document and on the eIDAS Regulation and its development, whose purpose is to facilitate and secure cross-border transactions by establishing a framework for digital identity and authentication. In the second part of the course we will analyse the two key provisions of the EU Treaty on Functioning of the EU: Art. 101 and 102, i.e. the prohibition of illegal agreements and the prohibition of abuse of a dominant position, and how these provisions may have a direct impact on the validity of the contracts. We will then tackle the discipline of data protection and how it is intertwined with European competition law, for instance with respect to abusive conducts put in place in the digital economy.

1. DCFR - Principles, Definitions and Model Rules of European Private Law (DCFR), pp. 3-8, 60-99, 277-278, 285-287. In addition, the following provisions: Article III.-3:302; Article III.- 3:502; Article III.- 3: 601; Article III.- 3: 701 (dcfr_outline_edition_en, downloadable at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/policies/civil/docs/dcfr_outline_edition_en.pdf) 2. Consumer Law - Liability Product and Consumer Guarantees Directives: Dir. 85/374 of 25 July 1985; Dir. (EU) 770/2019 of 20 May 2019, on certain aspects concerning contracts for the supply of digital content and digital services; Dir. (EU) 771/2019 of 20 May2019, on certain aspects concerning contracts for the sale of goods. Lack of conformity in DCFR [DCFR as preparatory work for CFR. Purposes of the DCFR. Lack of conformity in DCFR: concept of conformity with the contract; third party rights or claims in general; time for establishing non conformity; examinations of the goods; notification of lack of conformity; remedies for the lack of conformity - DCFR and slides. 3. Unidroit Principles, PECL - i. Unidroit Principles [Preamble and Chapter 1; Arts. 2.1.1-2.1.6; Arts. 2.1.15-2.1.16; Arts. 6.2.1-6.2.3] downloadable in pdf format from Unidroit website: pp. 1-45, pp. 59-64 and pp. 217-226. ii. Principles of European Contract Law [Arts. 1:101, 1:102, 1:103, 1:104, 1:105, 1:201, 1:202, 1:302, 2:101, 2:102, 2:103, 2:106, 2:201, 2:204, 2:301, 2:302] 4. Competition Law [i. Introduction to EU Competition Law; ii. Market definition; iii. SSNIP Test; iv. Market power; v. Article 101.1 TFEU and Sect. 1 Sherman Act; vi. Article 101. 2 TFEU and the ‘nullity’; vii. Cartel activity, explicit and tacit collusion; viii. Art. 101.3 TFEU: the ‘Rule of Reason’; ix. Horizontal and vertical agreements and the exceptions to Art.101.1; x. Art. 102 TFEU; xi. Dominance and Abuse of a Dominant Position; xii. Sect. 2 Sherman Act; xiii. Public v Private enforcement (individual and collective, e.g. ‘class actions’). Lucrum cessans and damnum emergens. Case-law on private enforcement. The European Directive on Antitrust Damages] o Slides updated in 2025: Lecture-1-A-Introduction-to-European-Competition-Law; Lecture-1-B-Article-101.1-TFEU; Lecture-2-A-Art-101.3; Lecture-2-B-Art.-102; Lecture 3 Private Enforcement Whish Bailey, Competition Law, 2024 (11th Edn) Oxford University Press: selected pages (the hard copy volume of the 11th edn is available at the LUISS Library. Scanned selected pages are available at the library’s system for download and will be distributed). 5. Data Protection: Various Authors, Handbook on European data protection law, European Commission, 2018 (downloadable at https://fra.europa.eu/sites/default/files/fra_uploads/fra-coe-edps-2018-handbook-data-protection_en.pdf)

Lectures, cases and materials, testimonies

Written examination (Multiple Choice Test)

Regular attendance and active class participation will be taken into account