Does the EC have competence to legislate in the field of contract law? This paper demonstrates that there are ambiguities to be confronted, especially in the wake of the treatment of the permissible scope of legislative harmonisation by the Court in its Tobacco Advertising judgment (Case C-376/98). The paper tracks the Commission?s evident preference to avoid plunging into the ?competence question? in its contract law documentation of 2001, 2003 and 2004. It finds such caution to be entirely understandable, though the matter remains of lurking significance in the development of European contract law.
European Review of Private Law