Yearbook of Private International Law - Volume 4 (2002)

Despite the effects of globalization, regional and nationa developments are still an obstacle to the quest for worldwide unification of Private International Law. Numerous contributions of volume IV of the Yearbook of Private International Law (2002) are devoted to such developments. The entire column 'Doctrine' Deals with the extremely important conflicts developments in the European Union. The fact that rules of private international law have become part of the "acquis communaitaire" under the Treaty of Amsterdam does not seem to exclude national legislation. The best example is the fact that Belgium is now in the last phase of adopting a new Private International Law Act, the draft of which is presented in this volume. This shows that the tradition of national conflict of laws is still strong in the EU Member States and continues to develop parallel to the European quest for universalim. The achievement of the Inter-American Conference, presented in this volume in the column "News from Washington", is another important example of important regional developments. In the column "National reports, in addition to reports on new developments in Canada and China, we are also pleased to have a Russian report presenting an overview of the new legislation on private international law adopted in 2002. Although one might question the solutions of some of the new rules, they certainly represent significant progress in Russia's endeavor to endorse the rule of law. The overview on the activities of uniform law organizations includes this year together with the usual report on the on-going work in Hague Conference, a report on the recent Unidroit achievements, in particular in the field of secured transactions. Finally, the new column "Report on court decision" and the column "Forum" include interesting contributions on subjects of company, trust, competition and labour law.