The Application Of Difficult Situations Under The Exemption Clause Of Article 79 Of The United Nations Convention On Contracts For The International Sale Of Goods

The exemption clause in Article 79 of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods(CISG)stipulates whether the parties to the contract may be exempt from liability for failure to perform their contractual obligations due to uncontrollable impediments,allowing the parties under an international trade contract to invoke Article 79 for exemption in the event of an impediment to the performance of the contract.However,in the practice of international commercial justice,the "impediment exemption clause" still has problems of application and interpretation.One important problem is whether the exemption clause contains "hardship" that make the performance of the contract difficult.In the first Chapter,the thesis introduces the background of the establishment of the CISG under the unified movement of the International Sale of Goods Law,and then puts forward the application of the hardship situation in Article 79 from the historical change of the term "impediment" in Article 79,and finally analyzes the constituent elements of exemption clause Article 79 of CISG.In the second Chapter,it first analyzes the constituent elements of the hardship clause in Article 6.2.2 of the UNIDROIT Principles of International CommercialContracts,and then analyzes the consequences of hardship clause of the UNIDROIT Principles using the adjustment rules for hardship of Schmitthoff,a British scholar.Finally,it compares the hardship clause with force majeure,then concludes that the provisions of the UNIDROIT Principles reflects the trend of combining "force majeure" with "hardship" for adjustment.The third Chapter introduces the Belgium Case: Scafom International v.Lorraine Tubes S.,and analyzes the first trial decision,the retrial decision and the final judgment.Finally,it concludes that the Supreme Court of Belgium used the UNIDROIT principles in the final judgment to fill the deficiency in Article 79 of CISG for hardship,which is of guiding significance for the application of hardship in practice.The fourth Chapter demonstrates the feasibility of applying exemption clause Article 79 to hardship,and draws the conclusion that Article 79 can be applied to hardship by analyzing whether the "hardship" belongs to the adjustment scope of Article 79,whether the UNIDROIT Principles can be used as a general principle to solve the problem of hardship and the minimum standards to be applied in economic hardship.The fifth Chapter analyzes the effect of the recent outbreak of "Covid-19" on the performance of international sales contract,then analyzes possibility of applying the "force majeure" or "change of circumstances" provisions under the law of China and applying the exemption clause under CISG in this situation,and provides some suggestions to the parties involved in international goods sale.