The Belgian Code de droit international prive can certainly be seen as displaying all the key attributes of a classical code and, as such, should be promised a similar destiny. Its aspiration to transparency and permanency however risk being compromised more quickly than that of the founding codes; the continuing and relatively rapid development of Community private international codifications will regularly and increasingly interfere with the new code. In the field of jurisdiction and recognition and enforcement a number of Regulations already exist which do not substitute themselves for domestic sets of rules, but create a duality of regimes. This might generate difficulties for practitioners but will not as such adversely affect the new Belgian private international law system or render it without object. However, universal EC instruments, several of which are planned, will progressively render domestic choice of law obsolete in the areas falling within their scope. These sectoral and often complex instruments which pursue Community objectives essentially different from those of the code, will eventually and inevitably disrupt the substantive and purposive consistency of this major Belgian work, which will have to be partially but repeatedly amended as a consequence. This is paradoxical because it was the absence of coherence and the ensuing lack of clarity and predictability which led to the code being drafted. If a time ever conies when a European private international law group pleads in favour of the establishment of a Community private international law code in order to re-instil some legal certainty in this area, it is hoped that a methodology similar to that used in Belgium between 1995 and 2004 will be followed.
展开▼
