A.Introduction

In April 2003 I commented on the European Commission's Action Plan on a More Coherent European Contract Law [COM(2003) 68 final] and the Green Paper on the Modernisation of the 1980 Rome Convention [COM(2002) 654 final]. While the main argument of that paper, i.e. the common neglect of the inherent interrelation between both the further harmonisation of substantive contract law by directives or through an optional European Civil Code on the one hand and the modernisation of conflict rules for consumer contracts in Art. 5 Rome Convention on the other hand, remain pressing issues, and as the German Law Journal continues its efforts in offering timely and critical analysis on consumer law issues, there is a variety of recent developments worth noting.

B. European Contract Law

Since the publication of the Action Plan on a more coherent European Contract Law, the Council and the European Parliament have both passed resolutions on it and the Commission has received contributions from 122 stakeholders. All contributions as well as a Summary of Responses prepared by the Commission are available through the Commission's European Contract Law Homepage. The two most striking results of the consultation process are the following: On the one hand the so-called sector-specific approach of community harmonisation measures was criticized by a variety of responses, especially from academia. While the Action Plan promoted the initiation of further sector-specific harmonisation measures and of the preparatory work to an optional European Contract Code as two complementary measures to be taken simultaneously, the Commission now seems to have become aware of the fact, that the sector-specific minimum harmonisation measures are less a solution then themselves part of the problem. In other words, the fragmentation of Member States' mandatory contract law rules is increasingly seen as a barrier to the completion of the internal market. Thus, on the very entry-page of the Commission's European Contact Law Homepage today we can...