The Significance of the Rome Ii Regulation in the Unification Process of the European Union

Abstract

Legislative activity of the European Union (EU) came close to embodying the idea of creating the EU Code of Private Law, although traditionally questions of private international law have always been within the scope of regulation of national legislation. The work on the unification of the rules on applicable law in the EU is currently being carried out in such activities of the EU Council and the EU Commission as: 1) the law applicable to contractual obligations (Rome I - Regulation of 2008); 2) the law applicable to non-contractual obligations (Rome II - Regulation of 2007); 3) the law applicable to the issues of divorce and separation of spouses (Rome III - Regulation of 2010); 4) the law applicable to inheritance issues (Rome IV - Regulation of 2012). The law applicable to non-contractual obligations is defined in the EU member states under Regulation (EC) No 864/2007 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11.07.2007 “On the law applicable to non-contractual obligations (“Rome II ”)” (hereinafter referred to as “Rome II”). The use of uniform rules was intended to increase the predictability of court decisions and to ensure a reasonable balance between the interests of the person held responsible and the person who was harmed. The provisions of the "Rome II" Regulation are applied in situations containing conflicting laws to noncontractual obligations in the civil and commercial sphere and do not apply to tax, customs and administrative disputes, as well as to the responsibility of the state for actions and inaction committed during the exercise of public authority. A number of other issues are also excluded from the scope of the provisions of the Regulation. The Regulation sets a general rule for the choice of an applicable law: the law applicable to a non-contractual obligation arising from harm is the law of the country where the damage occurs, but there are some exceptions to this rule. Summing up, it should be noted that at present the EU legislation on applicable law cannot be called consistent and logical. Many legal rules in different regulations repeat each other, thereby increasing the amount of legislative material, which adversely affects the principle of accessibility of justice. Long and painstaking work is needed to improve the EU legislation in the field of the international private law, in particular, the preparation by the EU Commission of Green Books on various aspects of the international private law.