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The article looks at Article 9(3) of Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 on the law applicable to contractual obligations (Rome I). Article 9(3) is concerned with the application of overriding (or internationally) mandatory rules of a third country; a question considered so controversial that the possibility to enter a reservation against the corresponding Article 7(1) was included in the forerunner to Rome I, the Rome Convention.

The first part of the article contains a historical background including the details of negotiations in the Council when the Rome Convention was transformed into the Rome I Regulation and the rule was re-drafted. The second part of the article contains an in-depth analysis of Article 9(3) and looks at the question of whether the changes made in order to make it acceptable to those states that had entered a reservation against its predecessor, Article 7(1) of the Rome Convention, will actually have any practical importance or whether they were mainly for show.

maintenance, private international law, hague conference

The question of the legal nature of the so-called country of origin principle in Article 3 of the EC E-commerce Directive causes great confusion. Many, including e-service providers, advocate that the provision should be understood as a choice of law rule designating the law of the place of establishment of the service provider as applicable. However, Article 1(4) of the Directive explicitly states that no additional rules of private international law are created. Is there a conflict within the Directive or can such a conflict be avoided? There are basically three ways in which the country of origin principle could be understood: (1) the E-commerce Directive establishes a choice of law rule for the law applicable to e-commerce services, irrespective of the provision in Arti-cle 1(4); (2) the country of origin principle of the E-commerce Directive only sets out certain limitations to the application of the designated law; (3) the Di-rective makes the rules of the home country of the service provider internation-ally mandatory and thus applicable irrespective of what law is applicable to the contract or tort etc. This article analyses the three alternatives and advocates the last solution as the one which is not only line with the legislative intent but also permits the Directive to maintain logical coherence.