Conference Report: ‘20 Years of CISG in the Netherlands’, Amsterdam, 20 April 2012

Abstract

On 20 April 2012, the Netherlands Journal of Commercial Law (Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Handelsrecht) held its annual conference in Amsterdam. This bilingual conference was dedicated to the 20th anniversary of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (CISG) in the Netherlands. It provided an opportunity for both academics and practitioners from various jurisdictions to exchange thoughts and experiences with respect to the interpretation and application of the CISG. The descriptive summary of the presentations outlined in this conference report is selective and does not cover all the information and ideas posited by the authors. A full version of the conference papers is published in the Nederlands Tijdschrift voor Handelsrecht (Netherlands Journal of Commercial Law), in the second issue of 2012, pages 46–106. The Chair of the conference, Dr Sonja Kruisinga, welcomed the participants and gave an introduction in which she emphasized the important role of the Netherlands in the development of the conventions on international sales transactions. The first part of the conference focused on the general trends in the application and interpretation of the CISG in its Member States. Prof. Dr Ingeborg Schwenzer addressed the uniform application and interpretation of the CISG and the role of the CISG Advisory Council therein. Adopted by 78 Member States and with several countries that are in the process of joining the Convention, the CISG is by far the most successful convention in the field of private law. Additionally, the CISG has played a unifying function in a more indirect manner by exerting influence at both international and national levels. The drafters of the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts (hereinafter ‘UNIDROIT Principles') and the Principles of European Contract Law (PECL), as well as domestic legislators in, inter alia, Finland, Estonia, and the People's Republic of China have followed the CISG to great extent, for example, with respect to the systematic approach and the remedy mechanism. Despite this great success, the restraining factor in the global unification of sales law is the lack of a uniform interpretation of the Convention by the courts in the various Member States. The courts have often proven to interpret