The “Commission on European Contract Law” (also known as “Lando Commission”) was founded in the early 1980s as a private consortium and was headed by Professor Ole Lando from Copenhagen. Its members were professors for civil law from all Member States of the European Community then. Based on a comparative law approach the Lando Commission developed and published the so-called “Principles of European Contract Law” (“PECL”), which comprise codified general rules of contract law (Lando/Beale (eds.), Principles of European Contract Law: Parts I and II combined and revised, 2000; Lando/Clive/Prüm/Zimmermann (eds.), Principles of European Contract Law: Part III, 2003).
After the Lando Commission had announced its termination at the end of last century after having finished its work, the so-called “Study Group on a European Civil Code” (SGECC”) followed as a successor under its chairman Professor Christian von Bar from Osnabrück. The SGECC ties up to the substantive presettings (PECL) and the methodology of the Lando Commission and deals with a significantly enlarged domain of legal matters: the so-called “patrimonial law” (“Vermögensrecht”) comprising all “classic” parts of civil law except family law and the law of succession, i.e. general as well as special contract law, further law of obligations beyond that (such as tort law, negotiorum gestio, and law of unjustified enrichment) and property law (for the time being focussing only on movables).
The SGECC consists of a “Coordinating Committee” (“CoCo”) and a multitude of working groups, which aim at formulating recommendations for rules of certain parts of patrimonial law on a comparative, PECL-like basis. Currently working groups on sales law (head: Ewoud Hondius, Netherlands), service contracts (Maurits Barendrecht, Netherlands), long-term contracts (Martijn Hesselink, Netherlands), financial services contracts (Laurent Aynès/André Prüm, France), extra-contractual obligations (tort law, negotiorum gestio, unjustified enrichment; head: Christian von Bar, Germany), security rights in movables (Ulrich Drobnig, Germany), transfer of ownership in movables (Brigitta Lurger/Wolfgang Faber, Austria), trust law (Hector MacQueen, Scotland), rental of movable property (Kare Lilleholt, Norway), e-commerce law (Christina Ramberg, Sweden) and consumer protection law as well as agency law (both Marco Loos, Netherlands) have been set up. The “Insurance Group”, dealing with insurance contract law, is associated with the SGECC.
Each working group has its focus in one country and is financially supported by universities or national research institutions. They are made up of professors and assistants employed at universities as well as of a majority of project assistants and other project staff members who are thought to come from several different countries in order to guarantee the project’s comparative approach. Each working team is supported by its own “Panel of Advisors”, consisting of foreign professors with a particular expertise in the team’s work domain. This “Panel of Advisors”, which is usually made up of four or five persons, meets with the working team several times a year and discusses and evaluates its work progress (e.g. drafts).
The SGECC’s main body is the “Coordinating Committee” (“CoCo”), which consists of the professors heading the working teams as well as further professors, in order to accomplish an equal representation of all EU Member States. The CoCo meets with the heads and selected members of the working teams twice a year (in mid-june and mid-december) for conferences of four days, taking place in different EU Member States, each time invited by a university. Draft proposals for rules are then presented to the CoCo by the working groups and alternative drafts are being discussed. The CoCo gives instructions and suggestions for each team’s further work progress and decides upon drafts qualified for incorporation into a ECC.
The Austrian working group (Graz/Salzburg) on the “Transfer of Movables” (“TOM”) deals with the transfer of ownership in movable property by means of a contract and other claims in personam, by virtue of acquisitive prescription, processing, amalgamation or good faith acquisition. The working group has started its work in 2001 on an initiative of Prof. Willibald Posch (Graz) and Prof. Michael Rainer (Salzburg). It is now (2005 onwards) headed by Prof. Brigitta Lurger (Graz) and Dr. Wolfgang Faber (Salzburg). Further collaborators are the following research assistants employed at the Universities of Graz and Salzburg: mw. mr. Martine Costa (Salzburg), Ferenc Szilagy LL.M. (Salzburg), Dr. Rui Cascao (Graz), Anastasios Moraitis M.L.E. (Graz), Dott. Daniele Mattiangeli (Graz), Ernest Weiker LL.B. (Graz), and over 30 researchers from the 25 Member States of the EU (reporters) who write the country reports. Prof. Torgny Hastad (Sweden), Prof. Michael Bridge (England), Prof. Anna Veneziano (Italy) and Prof. Matthias Storme (Belgium) are the professors assigned as advisors to the team. The Working Group is currently sponsored by the FWF (Austrian Research Fund) and the European Commission (CoPECL, 6th Framework Programme).