Principles of European Insurance Contract Law published
17.10.2009
The Principles of European Insurance Contract Law (PEICL) have been published by Sellier European Law Publishers, Munich.
The new book contains the documentation of ten years of work of the Project Group: Restatement of European Insurance Contract Law that was established in 1999 under the presidency of the late Professor Fritz Reichert-Facilides of the University of Innsbruck.
The Max Planck Institute has been involved in the work of this Group from the very beginning. During the first years, a research project financed by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft led to the publication of the comparative foundations of the PEICL in Jürgen Basedow/Till Fock, eds., Europäisches Versicherungsvertragsrecht, vol. 1-3, Tübingen, Mohr, 2002-2003. This comparative investigation and more recent comprehensive statutes on insurance contract law enacted in Sweden, Germany, and Portugal give evidence of the progressive development of this area of the law which aims in particular at a more efficient protection of policyholders.
The PEICL depart from the generally accepted insight that the single insurance market of the EU has not been established so far in respect of small and medium-size risks and that divergent mandatory provisions of national insurance contract law are a major reason for this deficiency. Nevertheless they are not conceived as a blueprint for a harmonization of national insurance contract law, but suggest the adoption of an optional instrument which parties to an insurance contract can agree upon as a substitute to the national insurance contract law that would be applicable under the pertinent choice of law rules. This would allow interested insurers to make use of them for cross-border insurance contracts and, thus, for the establishment of European risk pools, whereas other companies may prefer to stick to a purely domestic insurance business on the basis of national insurance contract law.
The PEICL pursue a high-level protection of policyholders, an objective shared by many recent national laws. Their provisions are either fully mandatory or provide for binding minimum standards which can be derogated from only to the benefit of the policyholder. Dispositive or default rules contained in many national statutes were held to be redundant in view of the freedom of contract and the practice of comprehensive policies. Inevitable gaps should be filled by the provisions of the Principles of European Contract Law or perhaps, by a future Common Frame of Reference.
According to the Group’s plans, the PEICL will have four parts: the general part applicable to all types of insurance, general rules on indemnity insurance, life insurance, and liability insurance. The book that has now been published contains the first two parts, i.e. the general part and the general rules on indemnity insurance. Similar to the restatements of the American Law Institute, the quasi-legislative rules are accompanied by comments and by notes which refer to parallel provisions of national insurance contract law. While the working language of the Group has been English and the authentic language of the PEICL therefore is English, the book contains a large number of translations of the rules into other European languages.
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