Business Law

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Concerning contract negotiations sooner or later it always comes back to the question, on which law the contract should be founded. Obviously everybody would like to have its own national law as the one founding the contract, since one is familiar with it and has some ideas of which risks need to be covered. To reach a compromise digestible for both parties the issue of international trade law comes into the picture. This has been created as a foundation for international contracts, the official titel is 'United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods'. Up to now more than 60 countries signed this treaty, on the African continent Egypt, Burundi, Guinea, Lesotho, Mauretania, Sambia and Uganda. Ghana has signed, but not yet enforced and South Africa is in the process of consideration. The actual status of treaty members you can update on the left side following the external link to the UNCITRAL Website.
Those that signed the treaty agreed to keep this international law superior to the national law, so unless otherwise stated in the contract, international trade law overrules national trade law. Reservations against the acceptance of UN trade law as a foundation to a trade contract are more or less unfounded, so there are only minor differences to i.e. German national law. Disadvantageous is the lack of practical experience, since this trade law has been designed in 1980 and is relatively young compared to other national law standards. Lawyers like to refer to previous cases and rulings, and there have not yet been to many based on this law.

Updated 8/2003