La responsabilità civile in Europa: prospettive di armonizzazione

The essay takes into account the growing desire, repeatedly expressed both at practical or doctrinal level, to encourage the setting up of a uniform body of rules regarding private law applicable in Europe. The specific example is here explored of non contractual civil liability. After ascertaining that the topic, through the possession, in all European legal systems, of an adequate set of characters which make it possible to speak of a legal category, may constitute the object of an harmonization process, the research proceeds from the recently adopted, by a qualified working group of legal scholars from all over Europe, Principles on Non-contractual liability arising out of damage caused to another. The main parts of the text are here scrutinized, with particular reference to the origin of the expression designed to describe, in the project’s Authors’ opinion, the form of liability in question and to a small number of the most relevant choices made in the Principles, such as the novel notions of legally relevant damage and interest worthy of legal protection. An overview is also given of the Principles of European Tort Law, grounded on a different attitude towards the identification of the structure of non-contractual liability. Obviously, not all problems are solved nor discrepancies between different legal systems wiped out. On the contrary, there remain difficulties, mostly of a political nature and ascribable to many member-States’ reluctance to abandon their national laws in favour of a unified law. But, on the other hand, harmonization is a process which seems to daily progress through many judicial decisions and theoretical contributions directed at finding out if and what common rules can be applied in the private laws of European countries.