The article deals with selected significant decisions of the Italian Constitutional Court, which have determined the development of Community law application in the Italian legal order and can be a source of inspiration in particular for the new Member States of the European Union, including the Slovak Republic. In particular, the Italian Constitutional Court´s decisions deal with the relationship between Community law and national law, solutions of conflicts between Community law and national law concerning the application of law and the protection of the fundamental constitutional principles and human rights guaranteed by the constitution and last but not least, the relationship between the Italian Constitutional Court and the European Court of Justice.
Civil law, as an integral part of private law, is currently influenced by European harmonization and unification tendencies, even though there are certain trends favouring legal pluralism and solely spontaneous harmonization of law. The most comprehensive solution of private law unification in Europe would be to adopt a European Civil Code. This idea, despite the fact that the European Civil Code enthusiasm of the nineties has already, as it seems, vanished, is still present in the European academic and political arena, even though it is regarded rather as a long-term aim of private law unification. The present article consisting of three parts deals with this long road towards the European Civil Code that private law in the European Union is on. In the first part of the article, the author deals with the current situation of civil law in the context of harmonization and unification tendencies and describes the forms of unification of law; characterizes the initiatives in the field of civil law unification in Europe and analyzes the four options of action in the field of contract law presented by the Commission.
The third part of the article deals with the legal basis for adopting a European Civil Code in Community law and with its legitimacy and outlines certain problems of European supranational codification of civil law concerning in particular a uniform application of unified rules, legal pluralism and the appropriate form of a supranational civil code. The author points out that the question of adopting a uniform civil code for Europe is not only related to legal, but also to many extralegal categories and policy-based considerations. As to the feasibility of a European Civil Code, the author comes to the conclusion that the rules of civil law can be unified in form of a uniform civil code. However, clear economic and political arguments in favour of such a solution are currently missing. Moreover, even if a political agreement to adopt a European code were reached, which seems improbable, without at least certain elements of a common legal culture, the unified rules would not be applied in a uniform way in various legal environments. Nonetheless, given the converging tendencies in the European legal area, the author concludes that European private law is on its albeit long way towards a European Civil Code. However, this code will almost certainly not be a classic code, but rather a postmodern open-textured set of rules the concrete form of which cannot predicted yet.
The second part of the article focuses on the methods of civil law unification in Europe including in particular a European Civil Code or other binding Community instruments, drafting common principles, spontaneous harmonization of private law and application of an optional instrument. Furthermore, this part of the article is concerned with economic and political arguments regarding a potential European Civil Code and it also deals with the importance of differences between legal systems and legal cultures with respect to the unification of law by means of a uniform civil code.
The article deals with selected significant decisions of the Italian Constitutional Court, which have determined the development of Community law application in the Italian legal order and can be a source of inspiration in particular for the new Member States of the European Union, including The Slovak Republic. The Italian Constitutional Court´s decisions analyzed in the first part of this article deal with the fundamental questions of the Community law applications in national legal orders, in particular with the relationship between Community law and national law, solutions of conflicts between Community law and national law concerning the application of law and the protection of the fundamental constitutional principles and human rights guaranteed by the constitution.
JavaScript jest wyłączony w Twojej przeglądarce internetowej. Włącz go, a następnie odśwież stronę, aby móc w pełni z niej korzystać.