L'unification internationale du droit des garanties indépendantes
Institution:
Paris 2Disciplines:
Directors:
Abstract EN:
Born and shaped under the auspices of international commercial practices, and flowing mainly in their orbit, even though no more exclusively, independent guarantees have long formed a "no-law land". They were governed solely by their own terms as well as by general provisions of contract laws. The national profile that characterises inevitably these provisions and the court decisions rendered under their auspices revealed however blatantly the absence of any common undersantding of the concepts and the practices that underlie the usage of independent guarantees. The need for security and forseeability in international commercial transactions prompted an international normative action towards unifying the laws of independent guarantees. This action worked mainly on two dimensions: the first, of contractual nature, consists in elaborating uniform norms of conduct and model forms destined to be contractually incorporated in each guarantee. Additionally, the international normative action worked on another dimension aimed more particularly towards state's national laws. In this respect, an international convention on independent guarantees and standby letters of credit is currently being finalized. Its legislative nature and its applicability ipso jure unless otherwise excluded enables the unification actio to reach areas otherwise inaccessible to contractual unification means. Revisiting the legal principles and practices of independent guarantees as reshaped by the new unification process, with the aim to studying the unification reached and analysing the causes for the irreducibility of refractory areas, shall lead the development of this work. A constant reference to the field practice of guarantees shall underlie its doctrinal studies.
Abstract FR:
Issues de la pratique du commerce international, et evoluant dans son orbite, bien que non exclusivement, les garanties independantes ont longtemps vogue dans une poche de "nondroit". Elles etaient alors regies par leurs propres termes et par les dispositions generales du droit des contrats. Les specificites nationales qui teintaient inevitablement ces dispositions de leur couleur locale et la jurisprudence batie sous leurs auspices, rendaient patente l'absence d'uniformisation dans les concepts et les pratiques qui sous-tendaient l'usage des garanties independantes. Les imperatifs de securite et de previsibilite dans les operations du commerce international rendaient ineluctable l'avenement d'une action normative internationales a l'effet d'unifier le droit des garanties independantes. Cette action oeuvra dans deux dimensions. La premiere, contractuelle, consiste en l'elaboration de normes de conduite uniformes et de modeles de formulaires destines a etre incorpores volontairement dans chaque garantie. L'action normative internationale opera aussi dans une autre dimension portant plus specifiquement sur les legislations nationales des etats. Une convention internationale relative aux garanties independantes et aux lettres de credit standby est actuellement en cours de finalisation. Sa nature legislative et son application ipso jure, sauf exclusion volontaire, permettront de porter l'uniformisation au-dela des limites infranchissables pour des procedes d'unification de nature contractuels. Revisiter le droit des garanties independantes a la lumiere de ces nouveaux apports unificateurs, avec l'obectif d'etudier la portee de l'harmonisation atteinte et d'analyser les causes de l'irreductibilite des ilots refractaires, est l'objectif de cette these. La reference constante a la pratique contractuelle des garanties formera la ligne directrice de ses developpements.