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Audit, Mathias --- "Impact of the Mutual Recognition Principle on the Law Applicable to Products" [2009] ELECD 319; in Cafaggi, Fabrizio; Muir Watt, Horatia (eds), "The Regulatory Function of European Private Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2009)

Book Title: The Regulatory Function of European Private Law

Editor(s): Cafaggi, Fabrizio; Muir Watt, Horatia

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201997

Section: Chapter 9

Section Title: Impact of the Mutual Recognition Principle on the Law Applicable to Products

Author(s): Audit, Mathias

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

9. Impact of the mutual recognition
principle on the law applicable to
products
Mathias Audit

I. INTRODUCTION
In the main legal tradition, there is a border that is nearly impassable between
the fields of public law on the one hand and private law on the other. This strict
separation occurs in the theory of private international law. Scholars tradition-
ally consider that the conflict of legal rules1 only concerns the field of private
law. At a pinch, a specific public law rule would be considered as a mandatory
rule within a private law dispute.2 But it is widely accepted that there is no
conflict of laws between the public law rules of different states.
However, this traditional point of view is now contradicted by facts, due to
the particular angle of EC law. One of the main goals of European legal rules
is to build an integrated market within the European territory, allowing in
particular goods to move freely between the member states. This free move-
ment of goods is supposed to promote efficiency in production because it will
permit producers in different countries to compete directly with each other.
From that specifically economic angle, the distinction between public and
private law that exists in the national legal systems of the member states is
partially, if not totally, irrelevant. National legal rules of member states are
subject to the edification of the internal market, wherever they belong to one
branch or the other of the so-called summa divisio ...