European integration, legal diversity and the conflict of laws
Résumé
How far does internal market integration require unification of the substantive
laws of member states? If diversity can be maintained, how do traditional principles
of the conflict of laws relate to mutual recognition? These issues are at the
heart of two important contemporary debates within Europe, which are rarely
connected with one another. This article aims to provide a link by suggesting that
the conflict of laws could provide a more adequate tool of multi-level governance
than substantive unification, preserving legal pluralism, if it is allowed to assume a
regulatory function which it is has hitherto been denied in the European tradition (...).