From the Draft Common Frame of Reference to the Common European Sales Law: What has gone lost along the way? Some criticial remarks on the Future of European contract law

The contribution analyzes the evolution of contract law in the European Union, and its connection with European private law. It starts from the first comprehensive effort to harmonize (and in fact to codify) private law in the EU, the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR), highlighting the relationship and the tension between scholarly work and institutional goals. The focus then shifts to the reasons of the failure of this endavour, and the consequent choice of the EU institutions to narrow the scope only to contract law, through the proposal of a Common European Sales Law (CESL). The failure also of this projects is analyzed in terms of the role of European private law in relation to the EU internal market, and the specific features on the legal process at the EU level, focusing in particular on the role played by transnational legal doctrine between legal reform and critical assessment.