Globalisation and Legal Convergence: The Background

Introduction

This is a study about legal convergence in European consumer sales law. It aims to offer a comparative and numerical analysis on the extent to which European directives in this field contribute to convergence. It does so by developing a comparative and numerical framework to evaluate the ambit of such convergence, as well as the factors on which it is dependent. This analysis aims to fill a clear gap in the existing literature on European harmonisation that, until now, has avoided assessing the actual converging effect of European Union (EU) legislation.

This Chapter is structured as follows. The remainder of this Section provides the background to globalisation and legal convergence. Legal convergence, as a result of globalisation, is firstly defined (Section 1.2), and subsequently explained by making an inventory of the driving forces behind it (Section 1.3). This is essential for the clarification of a concept (‘convergence’) that has until now been used in many different ways and contexts. Section 2 is then devoted to one specific policy behind convergence: the harmonisation of laws as practiced by the European Union. This opens the way for defining the aims and methodology of this study (Section 3). The remaining Sections of this Chapter focus on the novelty of the study (Section 4), its limitations (Section 5) and overall structure (Section 6).

Although globalisation might be nothing new, the beginning of the 1990s brought another understanding of how interconnected individual economies are and how they contribute to the emergence of one new world economy. This renewed understanding of globalisation coincided with the further opening of markets, technological advances, and the democratisation of finance and information. Corporations openly became key players in governance, as did citizens. Diversity seemed to be a common feature of the multiple facets of globalisation, as it not only affected the actors involved, but the essence of the internationalisation process itself. In Stiglitz’ words, globalisation ‘encompasses many things: the international flow of ideas and knowledge, the sharing of cultures, global civil society and the global environmental movement’.