Europeanisation of private law in Ukraine. Comparisons in the field of law of obligations

Abstract

The fate of the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement – although finally signed between March and June 2014 – shows in a nutshell the nature of the more than 20 years of approximation between the European Union and Ukraine: A series of ambitious leaps towards the west, but few of them strong enough to not to be pulled back by the lack of respective legal implementation, legal reforms and – last not least – the lack of will. Much has been written about the weal and woe of Ukraine’s Europeanization, and literature will even increase after the ongoing escalations of this year will hopefully have ended soon. Still, less has been written about what has been achieved already in terms of legal harmonization, especially in a field much less touched by politics, as it is the law of obligations – in spite of an obvious need for both academics and practitioners. This article therefore provides a comparison of the Ukrainian law of obligations with European harmonization initiatives – here represented by the Draft Common Frame of Reference (DCFR) – and aims at pointing out these fields of law, where further approximation could be obtained.