INTRODUCTION

This chapter contains Opening Remarks written by each national reporter describing the interpretative process in their legal system. The editors asked these to be prepared with specific aims in mind.

First, the Opening Remarks perform the function of ‘setting the scene’ for the more detailed answering of questions which is to follow. To this end, reporters were asked to discuss more general matters relating to contract interpretation that they believed the reader should know about their legal system in advance. Starting with a country-specific introduction helps the reader to understand the answers to the questions better.

Second, they provide reporters with an opportunity to inform the reader of the cultural particularities of their respective legal systems without being confined by the parameters of questions and cases. It compensates for the reporter's experience that the inescapable presumptions of the questionnaire have a restrictive effect on her or his answers.

Third, allowing the reporters to clarify matters that the questionnaire would otherwise prevent them from doing advances the reliability of the output of the comparative analysis. Again, one of the comparatist's most likely pitfalls is the need for comparability and comprehensibility accidentally covering up the subtler differences and peculiarities. After all, if different reporters add different details that are not directly relevant to the question at hand, their reports would contain incomparable data. Nevertheless, the fact that comparability is not the objective of this chapter does not prevent consideration of the differences and similarities between the key characteristics of contract interpretation that the various opening remarks address. Therefore, the editors conclude this chapter with several comparative observations in which they focus specifically on the nature, aims, and means of contract interpretation.

CROATIA

In the Croatian legal system, the general provisions of contract law on interpretation of contracts are laid down in Arts. 319 – 321 of the Civil Obligations Act (COA). Because the COA is based on a monistic system, it sets the rules on interpretation for all types of contracts, both contracts characterised as civil law ones and those characterised as belonging to commercial law.