일본 민간투자법제에서의 불가항력에 관한 비교법적 연구

Abstract

Recently, many unexpected variables have occurred in public projects-such as COVID-19 and weather changes caused by climate change. The representative of these unexpected variables is force majeure. Force majeure means an unexpected event regardless of the responsibility of the parties to the contract. Force majeure is a matters, especially when public projects are performed by Private Finance Initiative(PFI) scheme. This is because PFI is performed over a long period of time(approximately 20 to 30 years), so there is a high probability that force majeure occurs during the project.
 Force majeure hinders the implementation of PFI projects, making it difficult to properly provide public services to the people. In this reason, we can say that the discussion on force majeure has an important meaning, especially in PFI projects. In addition, force majeure itself damages PFI projects, but it also causes legal disputes over force majeure, which hinders the implementation of the project. Therefore, in order to reduce legal disputes related to force majeure in PFI projects, it is necessary to clearly determine the following matters. First, which event will be viewed as force majeure, that is, the reason for force majeure. Second, when damage or additional costs occur due to force majeure reasons, how the public sector and private sector will share and deal with them, that is, force majeure risk sharing and handling.
 In this motive, the writer compares force majeure in PFI legal system between Korea and Japan so that it can quickly and stably provide public services to the public. To this end, the contents of the reasons for force majeure in the PFI legal system of Korea and japan and sharing and handling of force majeure risks are compared, and implications of the Japanese PFI legal system are derived.