Principles of International Commercial Contracts

The UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts ( Principles for international commercial contracts; PICC ) are non-binding rules for international trade, which were created by UNIDROIT.

Formation and development

As early as 1968 suggested the then Secretary-General of UNIDROIT Mario Matteucci for the unification of general principles of law in the field of civil law and commercial law in the form of restatement. 1971 was decided by the Governing Council of UNIDROIT take a project to the program of work, the first entitled " Progressive Codification of International Trade Law" and was later renamed the " development of rules for international commercial contracts ". 1976 was yet unclear where the project should result in the end. It could be either in a Model Law or in a restatement münden.1980 was obvious that the UNIDROIT Parties were unable to agree on a uniform binding international treaty. In the same year, a working group for the elaboration of a draft was used, which comprises a total of 19 representatives from all major legal systems and economic and social systems and leading experts in the fields of comparative law and international trade law were. After nearly fifteen years of preparation were in May 1994, the work on the 119 articles that are spread over seven chapters completed.

In 1997, the Governing Council of UNIDROIT set up an additional working group to expand the basic rules. This time, in addition to the 17 full members and six observers were involved from interested international organizations. These organizations were the ASA, the ICC International Court of Arbitration and the Milan Chamber of National and International Arbitration. It is noteworthy that while except the two representatives of UNCITRAL all other representatives from the field of arbitration arrived. In the new version of the basic rules only minor changes to the existing rules were made. The progress is to expand to four new subjects, which is designed to counter the incompleteness of the basic rules, which sometimes was a problem. With the unanimous adoption of the new version in April 2004. Direktionsrat by the number of articles to 185 and the Chapter increased to ten.

On 29 May 2006 the third working group met to begin the preparation of the next version of the basic rules. It included this time 18 full members and twelve observers, again comes a large part of the observer in the field of arbitration. Again to the old version remains more or less untouched, and four to five new subjects are added.

Method and structure

As the method of restatement was chosen in which the current legal situation is summarized. This was known mainly by the American Law Institute, the Restatements of the Law of Contracts out there since the early 20th century. A formulated as a standard set rule or general principle of law (Black Letter Rule ) is followed by a brief comment like explanation with explanatory examples (Comment ), which is an integral part of the rule itself. The UNIDROIT Principles in the usual restatement Notes, in which comparative law material is listed have been omitted in order to emphasize the international character of the rules. But from the beginning they wanted to be more advanced than the model by deliberately the best of the existing rules selected, which is based on the latest court decisions ( " dernier cri de la jurisprudence "). Therefore, the term would be " pre- statement " for basic rules in some ways more appropriate. Technically, it is on the UNIDROIT Principles only a mere summary and order of international treaty law. Therefore the acceptance and binding force of the basic principles will depend, as in the model, the reputation of the adopted institution, such as the authority of UNIDROIT, from.

Legal nature

In the literature it is argued in the context of a source of law doctrine as to whether they constitute an independent legal system or just general business conditions.

Also in state courts is not yet clear whether the basic rules can be effective as the legal.

However, in most arbitration rules they are recognized as selectable law. Moreover, using it without the explicit permission of the parties is not seen as a reason to refuse recognition or enforceability of awards by state courts.