44. Unidroit and its role in development of modern international commercial law

UNIDROIT is an international institute for the unification of private law\insitut international pour l’unification du droit prive founded in 1926 as an auxiliary organ of the League of Nations. UNIDROIT was, following the demise of the League, re-established in 1940 on the basis of a multilateral agreement, the Unidroit Statute. In 1971, only five years after the foundation of UNCITRAL, the Secretariat of UNIDROIT presented its idea for the drafting of general principles of international contract law in its Report to UNCITRAL on the 'Progressive codification of the law of international trade'. The Report was prepared in four conferences of all institutions that were concerned with the unification of the law,i.e. UNIDROIT, UNCITRAL, UNCTAD (United Nations Commission on International Trade and Development) and the sub-committee on Fundamental Legal Concepts as an organ of the European Committee on Legal Cooperation. Taking up Schmitthoff's ideas, the report called for a combined effort of all institutions and emphasized the urgent necessity to develop principles and rules of international contract law which could serve as a reference point for the construction of private contracts and international conventions without recourse to domestic laws. The report of the UNIDROIT Secretariat emphasized that its inherent objective was to lay down the basis for a 'code of international world trade law'. . In May 1994 UNIDROIT published the Principles of International Commercial Contracts. A year later, the Commission on European Contract Law published Part I of the Principles of European Contract Law.78 In December 1999 this Group published a revised and expanded version of these Principles. The UNIDROIT Working Group is currently deliberating a new edition of the UNIDROIT Principles.

45. Definition of sources of international commercial law

A sources of international commercial law – set of legal rules\legal norms on a basis of which an international commerce and trade is conducted.

46. Definition of harminisation and unification of international commercial law

Harmonisation and unification – are another key words in activities of all international organizations and institutes that are bringing the rules of the international law together and creating the written legal standards of doing international business and trade.

47. Types of sources of international commercial law

The main types of the sources of international commercial law:

- international agreements or treaties, conventions

- codes of conduct, general principles of contracts, uniform laws – “soft law”, lex mercatoria

- model contracts, standard forms used in a particular industry or re particular commercial transaction and agreements between transnational\international corporations and industry leaders (bank society for worldwide interbank financial telecommunication SWIFT (member owned cooperative with more then 9000 banks and financial organizations as members acting on the basis of its own corporate rules and standard contracts and terms)

- national law regulating the international commerce and public order rules

- arbitral awards, cases\precedents, court decisions