Autonomia delle parti e certezza del diritto nei Principi dell’Aja sulla scelta della legge applicabile ai contratti commerciali internazionali

In 2015 the Hague Conference on Private International Law adopted the Principles on Choice of Law in International Commercial Contracts, a non-binding set of rules, each complemented by comments and illustrations, which may be used as a model by national legislators in the reform of their domestic regimes and as a tool for interpreting or supplementing existing rules of private international law. The Principles pursue two fundamental goals: on the one side, they promote and enhance party autonomy; on the other, they aim at increasing the predictability of the law applicable to international commercial contracts. Accordingly, they grant parties wide freedom in the choice of the law governing their transactions, and also include the possibility to opt for non-state rules; they contain provisions on the validity of agreements concerning the choice of the applicable law; they set the limitations to the applicable law resulting from overriding mandatory rules and public policy. In this article, the authors examine the new instrument and assess its impact on both the existing national, international and supranational rules and on the practice in international commercial transactions.