Remedies for Non-performance: Perspectives from CISG, UNIDROIT Principles & PECL.（三） -法搜-中国法律信息搜索网

　
　Unlike the UNIDROIT Principles (as well as the CISG) which applies exclusively to international contracts, the European Principles are to be applicable (a) to domestic European contracts as well as to trans-European Union international contracts and (2) to virtually all European contracts, including merchant consumer contracts as well as contracts between commercial parties. Moreover, in addition to the express purpose, similar to the UNIDROIT Principles, of being applied "as general rules of contract law in the European Union" (Art. 1:101), the PECL is intended to represent a modern European lex mercatoria and most importantly for future legal developments, "as a model on which
　　　　 harmonisation work may be based". If the PECL will in fact be used by EU entities in interpreting European contract law or as the basis for further harmonisation efforts, it is a particularly important document to consider as indicating future legal developments.
　　　　 Furthermore, work is already underway to compile a third version of the Principles, and it is envisaged that the Principles will eventually form part of a future European Civil Code. At present, though, the principles are more of academic value as opposed to being applied in practice.
　　　　
　
　1.2.4 Brief Comparison
　
　So far as the general nature of the studied instruments is concerned, there already exists one important binding instrument in the field of international commercial law - the CISG, which contains the core of a true international commercial code.
　　　　 The Convention has already codified a substantial part of the lex mercatoria and is currently adopted as the law in sixty-two countries. The Convention elaborates the common law and practices of international sales and the common core of domestic commercial rules.
　　　　
　
　In contrast to the governmental negotiation and compromise leading to the CISG, the UNIDROIT Principles and the PECL were fundamentally born of the same need for a uniform body of law applicable to contracts and do not have the status of an international convention; therefore, their applications mainly rely on express or implied incorporation into a contract by the parties. On the other hand, the two Principles, unlike the CISG, where, due to the divergent legal regimes and views, consensus could only be reached on compromise solutions with some ambiguous wording and gaps in coverage, were not bound to take the viewpoints of every single country, legal regime or rule into account. The final choice among possibly conflicting rules was made on the persuasiveness or suitability of the rule within the overall regime. These efforts can thus be seen as more unified and coherent regimes than the CISG. These regimes definitely are a step forward in legal thinking and the number of similarities between the two regimes suggests that they represent the main directions being taken by international contract law.
　　　　
　
　As for the relationship between the two sets of Principles, it is also found that the PECL covers similar areas of law to the UNIDROIT Principles, but its geographical sphere of application is confined to the EU. The material scope of the application of the PECL is, however, wider than that of the UNIDROIT Principles, as it is intended to apply to all contracts including domestic transactions and those involving consumers and merchants.
　　　　 So while the PECL is of a narrower geographic focus than the UNIDROIT Principles, it covers a wider area of law. Despite of this, the substantial scope of application of the two Principles is identical in that they both aspire to be general principles of contract law. To use an expression well known in the world of international commerce, both are held out as a sort of codification of the modern lex mercatoria. Both of the two undertakings aspire to be models for national and international legislators, they each describe themselves as formulations of the lex mercatoria, and to some extent promote the harmonization of the law of contracts. It may be said that in the not too far future principles for international commercial contracts as elaborated in the UPICC and the PECL, in the light of the CISG which is the only one among the three instruments with mandatory application to the signatory States, will be developed and worthy of the name lex mercatoria which expresses rules accepted and observed by the international economic community.