Time to Update the Rome I Regulation

The Council has adopted a corrigendum to all versions of the Rome I Regulation to correct what appears to be an “obvious error”.  Art. 28, which had previously provided that the Regulation would apply to contracts concluded “after” (French: “après”; German: “nach”) 17 December 2009, will now refer to contracts concluded “as from” (French: “à compter du”; German “ab”) 17 December 2009, bringing it in line with Art. 29 which requires that the Regulation be applied “from” 17 December 2009.  The corrigendum was first published on 8 October and itself revised on 19 October.  Under the procedures for corrigenda (set out in a Council Statement of 1975), the amendment will apply unless the European Parliament took objection within 8-days (and there is no reason to believe that this is the case).  It is understood that the text of the corrigendum will appear in the Official Journal later this month.

The change would appear satisfactorily to put to bed the lacuna which had troubled the German delegation to the Council’s Civil Law Committee, with the result that lawyers concluding agreements on 17 December 2009 can now rest more easily.  Any legal opinions relating to such contracts can now, with confidence, be based on the Rome I Regulation (as opposed to the Rome Convention).

Unfortunately, those grappling with the Rome II Regulation do not have the same comfort.  As has been highlighted on these pages, there remains a controversy as to whether the Regulation applies to events giving rise to damage “which occur after” 20 August 2007 (the Regulation’s apparent entry into force date under Art. 254 EC) or those occurring “from”/”after” 11 January 2009 (the Regulation’s application date) (see Arts. 31-32).  The problem here is not so much the use of the word “after” in Art. 31 in contrast to the word “from” in Art. 32 (a mere trifle by comparison), but the fact that the Regulation uses different terminology (“entry into force”; “application”) in these two provisions dealing with its temporal effect and does not (explicitly, at least) stipulate an entry into force date in either of them.  Commentators disagree as to the correct solution, and a division of opinion has emerged (for example) in England (where the majority favour 20 August 2007 as the relevant date) and Germany (where opinion is divided, but is understood numerically to favour 11 January 2009).  Member State courts will, no doubt, need to grapple with this soon.  The question is: who will get there first, and which solution will they prefer?