European Sales Law — Reform and Adoption of International Models in German Sales Law - European Review of Private Law View European Sales Law — Reform and Adoption of International Models in German Sales Law by - European Review of Private Law European Sales Law — Reform and Adoption of International Models in German Sales Law 9 2/3

The sales directive will lead to the most important law reform in German contract law since the entering into force of the German Civil Code in 1900. This is true, first, for sales law and the law of limitation. Here, the most important problems were due to the fact that defects in quality and defects in the right confered were treated differently, that there was a multitude of grossly diverging limitation periods (from six months to thirty years) and that phenomena like the delivery of slightly different goods (aliud) or of a slightly diverging quantity (minus) were again treated differently. With respect to these differentiations, the directive will lead to an important simplification of German sales law. One major topic not treated by the directive will change as well: So far, in most cases sellers (and only sellers) could not be sued for damages in case of pure negligence but only of fraud. This is anachronistic and will change. One striking feature of new German sales law is that it applies to all sales with only very few specific rules for consumer sales. This is however due to the fact that also the (consumer) sales directive and the Vienna Convention on international (commercial) sales are very similar in most points. Apart from sales law, it is still likely that the reform of German contract law will extend, second, to two more fields: The general law of breach of contract will probably be reformed, the preparatory work by the so-called Schuldrechtskommission extended over two decades. And probably the different acts on consumer law will be integrated into the Civil Code. This relates mainly to door step selling, distance selling, consumer credits and also unfair contract terms, although the latter are not a problem only of consumer contracts under German law. German academia was taken in surprise by the pace of reform both on Community level and by the German legislature. It started to collaborate in the legislative process only lately and large parts of it still rather see the disadvantages of new models than the chances of law reform. This casts some doubts over the parts of the reform which are not imposed by the directive.

European Review of Private Law