Part 2 National and Regional Reports, Part 2.1 Africa: Coordinated by Jan L Neels and Eesa A Fredericks, 13 Egypt: Egyptian Perspectives on the Hague Principles

Abstract

This chapter presents Egyptian perspectives on the Hague Principles. The Egyptian private international law rules for international commercial contracts are found mainly in the Egyptian Civil Code no 131/1948 and the Egyptian Arbitration Code no 27/1994. Egyptian private international law, in general, accepts party autonomy as a private international law rule for determining the applicable law to international contracts. However, the Egyptian legislature has decided to exclude certain contracts, such as contracts for the transfer of technology and commercial agency, from the private international law rule in respect of party autonomy. To date, the Egyptian government has not expressed any plans to revise Egyptian private international law, despite some Egyptian scholars believing that the Egyptian conflicts rules are outdated and in desperate need of being replaced with more modern rules in this regard. Nonetheless, Article 24 of the Egyptian Civil Code allows the Egyptian Courts to resort to ‘[t]he principles of private international law [which] apply in the case of conflict of laws for which no provision is made in the preceding articles’. In principle, the courts are therefore allowed to refer to the Hague Principles to supplement either Article 19 of the Egyptian Civil Code or Article 39 of the Egyptian Arbitration Code.