Abstract

The paper seeks to provide the constitutional background to the debate about the place of ‘social justice’ in European contract lawmaking. It examines, first, the constitutional justification for the EC's intervention into contract law; second, the legal criteria governing the content of the EC's rules affecting contract law; and, third, the effect exerted by the EC on residual national competence. Its fundamental aim is to elucidate the dynamic and, in places, ambiguous nature of the relationship between the EU and its Member States, and to show how this impinges on contract law in particular.