Les litiges contractuels transfrontaliers – le domaine résiduel du droit international privé : le droit belge

This paper gives a critical overview of the rules of private international law to be found in the Code of Private International Law adopted in Belgium in 2004 in relation to cross-border commercial contracts. These rules apply in a marginal number of cases due to the priority enjoyed by European rules (such as those found in the Brussels I Regulation and the Rome I Regulation). Nonetheless it is important to analyze whether these rules are well drafted. The analysis reveals serious shortcomings mainly in relation to rules of jurisdiction. On the one hand, the rule pertaining the choice of court agreements gives courts an unnecessary margin of discretion to disregard the agreement of parties. On the other hand, the rule pertaining to the law applicable to agreements, is outdated and based on archaic method of identifying the applicable law.