Party Autonomy in International Property Law - Peace Palace Library

7. Article 14 Rome I: A Political Perspective
The Commission launched its proposal for a Rome I Regulation in December
2005. 17 The proposal for Article 14 Rome I contained a change
compared to paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 12 of the Rome Convention:
namely, to include contractual subrogation in the same rule. This proposal
was acceptable from the start to all Member States. However, the major
change was found in the added paragraph 3. This paragraph contained a
choice-of-law rule for the effects of an assignment against third parties.
The rule proposed was the law of the assignor’s habitual place of residence.
The Commission justified the choice of this rule by referring to the UN-
CITRAL Convention on the Assignment of Receivables in International
Trade, which contained a similar provision. 18
Then in 2006, negotiations between the Member States started in the
Council working group. We had one common goal: a uniform choiceof-law
rule covering all aspects of an assignment. It may seem an impossible
task to negotiate a complex and detailed instrument like Rome I
between 27 Member States with more than twenty different languages
being spoken and translated simultaneously. However, in negotiations in
Brussels with regard to future European instruments, it is common that
only a handful of Member States take part in the discussions on each of
the specific issues of such an instrument.
The reason for this limited participation in the discussion is that some
issues are highly specialised, and Member States cannot always send their
representative who is an expert with regard to such a specific matter.
This certainly applies to the choice-of-law rules on assignment, which is
a highly complex issue. Another reason might be that for some Member
States the topic under discussion is economically less important than for
other Member States.
17
COM (2005) 650 final, 2005 / 0261 (COD) of 15 December 2010, Proposal
for a Regulation of the European Parliament and the Council on the law applicable
to contractual obligations (Rome I).
18
Article 30 of the United Nations Convention on the Assignment of Receivables
in International Trade of 12 December, 2001. To date, only Luxembourg,
Madagascar, and the United States of America have signed this Convention,
and only Liberia has ratified it. It has not entered into force yet, see http: // ​
www.uncitral.org / ​uncitral / ​en / ​uncitral_texts / ​payments / 2001Convention_
receivables_status.html, last consulted on 22 March 2011.
Paulien M. M. van der Grinten
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