Unforeseeable Changes in Circumstances in Contracts in the New Romanian Civil Code

Abstract

The new Romanian Civil Code regulates the legal institution of unforeseeability, aiming to resolve situations in which one of the contractual subjects faces disproportionate and impossible burdens in his/her contractual legal relationship du to unforeseeable changes of circumstances intervened after the conclusion of the contract. With the entry into force of this code, the institution of unforeseeability enjoys explicit regulation, and as such, it becomes compulsory in the judicial practice. This, however, was not always the case: the legal institution known as the principle unforeseeability had existed before the entry into force of the new Civil Code, but only on a theoretical level, and in this respect, case law was not coherent. The present study offers a retrospect of the case law, with a special regard to the acceptance or rejection of this principle in the different judicial decisions.