INTRODUCTION

Thank you for agreeing to write a national report for the Common Core of European Private Law study on the Interpretation of Commercial Contracts. We are delighted to be working with you in this unique, international research project. To allow for a substantial, consistent and comprehensive comparative legal analysis, it is vital that all national reports have the same focus, address the same issues and do so in the same manner. That is why we kindly ask you to carefully study and closely follow the instructions in this document. These instructions include both general Common Core standards and guidelines specifically for the Interpretation of Commercial Contracts project. They cover both the answering of the questionnaire and formatting issues.

The following documents should be treated as forming integral parts of these instructions:

• – ‘The Approach:’ an explanation of the overall approach of the Common Core of European Private Law, by the Project's editors, Ugo Mattei and Mauro Bussani. Please pay particular attention to the sections on ‘Method – The Cornell Project’ and ‘Method – Legal Formants’;

• – ‘Instructions about how to answer the questionnaires’: Appendix to ‘The Approach’ covering general Common Core standards for national reports. Take particular account of the distinctions of ‘operative rules’, ‘descriptive formants’ and ‘meta-legal formants’.

THE APPROACH

THE GENERAL ‘COMMON CORE-APPROACH’

The method of the Common Core of European Private Law is ‘factua’ ; what is compared are not doctrinal systems but, rather, the most likely outcome, the so-called operative rules, that would be applied in specific hypothetical cases in the various legal systems. This analysis is informed not merely by legal rules, but by any element in the legal system that may determine or influence the legal outcome, hence by any relevant ‘legal formant’. Moreover, the Common Core approach makes use of questionnaires. These contain hypothetical problems, based on which the most likely solutions in the respective national legal systems are compared.

THE SPECIFIC APPROACH OF THE INTERPRETATION STUDY

When applied to the comparative study of the Interpretation of Contracts, the general Common Core approach entails the following.