European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law

Landesgerichtsstraße 11,

A-1080 Vienna
Austria

Telephone: ++43 1 40127-1688
Fax: ++43 1 40127-1685

e-mails: ectil@univie.ac.at

The European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law

The current law of tort in the various European countries is, as a result of the developments of our time, confronted with many diverse challenges. Factors such as the changing legislation and case law, increasing technical and medical knowledge as well as a heightened claim consciousness of those involved in cases of damage lead to the question of how one can and should react to the changing circumstances. As these legal and factual developments are not confined within national borders, it is necessary and reasonable to look for cross-border solutions to these problems. Such an approach is wise because the above-mentioned factors involve numerous economic consequences, for example in connection with the issue of insurability, as well as problems in the area of legal security. In addition one can recognise a general trend towards harmonising laws in Europe, which can be seen amongst others in the efforts of the European Parliament. While this trend is particularly evident in the field of contract law, it is nonetheless also visible in specific areas of tort law, such as environmental and product liability. It seems that a European law of damages is developing – in our opinion a desirable development.

Against this background, the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law (ECTIL) was founded in February 1999. ECTIL is a research

Various research projects are being or have been carried out in the following fields: The main project aims to establish “Principles of European Tort Law”. This research is being conducted by the members of the European Group on Tort Law – tort law experts from Europe, the USA, South Africa and Israel:

Francesco Busnelli and Giovanni Comandé (Pisa), Herman Cousy (Leuven), Dan Dobbs (Tucson), Bill Dufwa (Stockholm), Michael Faure (Maastricht), Attila Fenyves (Vienna), Suzanne Galand-Carval (Paris I), Israel Gilead (Jerusalem), Konstantinos D. Kerameus (Athens), Bernhard A. Koch (Innsbruck), Helmut Koziol (Vienna), Ulrich Magnus (Hamburg), Miquel Martin Casals (Girona), Jorge Sinde Monteiro (Coimbra), Johann Neethling (Pretoria), Edgar du Perron (Amsterdam), W.V. Horton Rogers (Nottingham), Gary T. Schwartz (UCLA), Jaap Spier (The Hague), Geneviève Viney (Paris I), Pierre Widmer (Lausanne) and Michael Will (Geneva, Saarbrücken).

In order to draft “Principles of European Tort Law” much research work on the individual projects has first to be completed. As this is a time-consuming exercise, it was deemed preferable to publish each topic on completion rather than waiting on the publication of the final principles at a later date.

As yet the following titles have appeared in the series, Unification Of Tort Law published by Kluwer Law International: Wrongfulness (editor: Koziol), Causation (editor: Spier) and Damage and Damages (editor: Magnus).

As preparatory work The Limits of Liability (editor: Spier) and The Limits of Expanding Liability (editor: Spier) have already been published and the remaining titles will also appear in this series.

In addition to the Principles Research, ECTIL has been and is working on the following projects: the present Medical Malpractice, Damages for Non-Pecuniary Loss (editor: Rogers), Tort Law and Social Law, Reduction Clause and a project on Pure Economic Loss, to be published in cooperation with the publishing house of Springer (Vienna-New York).

For these projects, ECTIL can – next to many members of the European Group on Tort Law – call upon other outstanding scholars: Arno J. Akkermans (Amsterdam), Willem H. van Boom (Tilburg), Christian Dahlman (Lund), Maria Paz Garcia Rubio (Santiago de Compostela), Viggo Hagstrøm (Oslo), Heinz Hausheer (Bern), Monika Hinteregger (Graz), Wolfgang Holzer (Graz), Hanno Honka (Äbo), Konstantinos Kremalis (Athens), Richard Lewis (Cardiff), Willibald Posch (Graz), Bénédict Winiger (Geneva), Miroslaw Nesterowicz (Torun), Eoin O’Dell (Dublin), Giulio Ponzanelli (Brescia), Alexandra Rumo-Jungo (Freiburg i.Üe.), Gottfried Schiemann (Tübingen), Bernd Schilcher (Graz), Reiner Schulze (Münster), Carel Stolker (Leiden), Pierre Tercier (Freiburg i.Üe), Lubos Tichy (Prag), Christiane Wendehorst (Göttingen), Lotta Wendel (Lund).

At present, ECTIL is endowed by the Ministries of Justice of Austria and Switzerland, the Austrian Ministry of Science, MunichRe, the Austrian Insurance Alliance and other Institutions. Furthermore there are cooperations with METRO (Institute for Transnational Legal Research, Maastricht), with the Institut Suisse de Droit Comparé (Lausanne) and with the Private European and Comparative Law Observatory (Girona).

The Board of Directors