Learning outcomes of the curricular unit

This curricular unit aims to offer students knowledge of the choice-of-law regulation of some typical private transnational situations, either of patrimonial character (vg. contractual and non-contractual and commercial companies' transnational governance and mobility) or of mainly personal character (vg. marriage and divorce). This curricular unit aims in particular, on the one hand, to familiarize students with the various legal sources in force in Portugal (of domestic, secondary and primary EU Law or conventional law) called to govern those relations and how those sources articulate with one another on their intervention. It aims, on the other hand, to offer students the possibility of knowing and critically discussing, in light of relevant EU court decisions, the solutions provided by those sources (especially the new EU Regulations on Conflict of Laws) to some of the major problems presently involved on the regulation of those selected transnational situations in the EU context.

Syllabus

Introduction – The three models of regulation of transnational private relations in the EU
A) The centralized (top-down) model
B) The decentralized model
C) The model of competition among Member States’ private laws based on mutual recognition

Part I – Natural Persons
Personal status. Applicable law and scope of the personal law

Part II – Legal Persons
Law governing the personal status of legal persons. Commercial Companies and companies’ cross-border
mobility

Part III – Insolvency. Regulation 1346/2000

Part IV – Contractual Obligations
1 - Law applicable to contractual obligations
2 - Specific regimes of unfair contract terms in consumers contracts, agency contracts, and electronic commerce

Part IV – Non-contractual obligations
Law applicable to non-contractual obligations

Part VI – Family
Law applicable to marriage and divorce

Part VII – Succession
Regulation 650/2012