A Study On Choice-of-Law Rules Of Insurance Contracts In EU

The choice-of-law rules of insurance contracts in European Union refer to that rules in the level of European Community law. On the bases of art.7of Rome I, and comparing with provisions related to Rome Convention and EU a series of insurance directives, This paper synthetically used of the Theoretical analysis methods, Text analysis methods, case analysis methods and Interdisciplinary analysis methods to make a comprehensive and systematic analysis and research on the choice-of-law rules of EU insurance contracts with the three levels which are the background of rules, the course of development and the current status. The content of this thesis includes six parts:the introduction, the history of choice-of-law rules of EU insurance contracts, the choice-of-law rules of voluntary insurance contracts, the choice-of-law rules of compulsory insurance contracts, the mandatory rules, conclusion and improvement proposals.The introduction firstly introduced the topic selection backgrand and the research significance, and then it elaborated the current research status information in both Chinese and English, and pointed out the innovation point and the analysis methods. In writing ideas and structure arrangement part, we can kown that the writing purpose of this paper is establishing and improving our country’s choice-of-law rules of insurance contracts concerning foreign affairs on the bases of synthetically analysis of topic selection backgrand and research significance. It also elaborated why should we learn from EU’s experience, and finaly, it introduced five chapters which consitituted the mainbody of the thesis and the internal logical links.Chapter one, the history of choice-of-law rules of insurance contracts in EU. Depending on the development vein, for line to2008Rome I, the historical evolution can be divided into two stages. The first stage is before the Rome I, the stage of common adjustment for Rome Convention and the Insurance Directives; the second stage is after Rome I, the stage of single adjustment for the art.7and other relative provisions of Rome I.Chapter two, the choice-of-law rules of voluntary insurance contracts. The EU insurance contracts can be divided into original insurance and reinsurance contracts, and the original insurance can be divided into large risk insurance and non-large risk insurance, and the non-large risk contains life insurance and non-life insurance, and the later includes the insurance whose risk located in EU and the insurance whose risk is out of the EU. In accordance with this framework, this chapter elaborates the choice-of-law rules of insurance contracts in EU with three sections. Due to the particularity of reinsurance, it was arranged to the single third chapter.Chapter three, the choice-of-law rules of compulsory insurance contracts. This chapter firstly introduced emerging reasons and legal analysis of compulsory insurance, and then it elaabtated the choice-of-law rules of EU compulsory insurance contracts:the one is that the law of the country where risk located conflicts with the law of the country imposing the liability, the later should be applied; the other one is that member countries could apply the law of the country imposing the liability through derogating the choice-of-law rules of largerisk insurance and the non-large risk insurance. And finaly, it introduced the rules of compulsory vehicle insurance contracts, which contains Green Plan, and EU Directives and the legislation of compulsory vehicle insurance contracts in England, France and Germany.Chapter four, the mandatory rules in choice-of-law rules of EU insurance contracts. At first, it reviews the mandatory rules of traditional private international law, which contains public order, directly applicable law and public law, and then, it introduced the mandatory rule in Rome I, Which includes two types, one type is the provision which could not be degraded by agreement; the other type is the overriding mandatory rules. With the respect of the later, this paper states it with two aspects, one aspect is the judgement to overriding mandatory rules, and the other aspect is the types of overriding mandatory rules. The overriding mandatory rules contain forum overriding mandatory rules and the third country overriding mandatory rules, they are all complicated. At last, it metions some issues which is worth to pay attention.In the last chapter, it sums up characteristics and experience of EU law, and examines the shortage of the choice-of-law rules of insurance contracts in our county, and Puts forward the preliminary design of choice-of-law rules of international insurance contracts and gives relative explain. With the aspect of interregional insurance contracts, it lists different rules of substantive law and choice of law of insurance contracts of four legal areas in our country, and makes a comparative analysis. On this basis, it discussed the path to resolve law conflicts of interregional insurance contracts and deduced that it can apply our country’s choce-of-law rules of international insurance contracts by analogy. In view of particularity of law conflicts of interregional insurance contracts, we finaly raised three principles which are Principle of national sovereignty, principle of equality and mutual benefit and principle of restriction on applying public order and the choice-of-law rules of interregional insurance contracts.