A 60 month European Research Council grant has been awarded to Prof. Hans-Wolfgang Micklitz for the project "European Regulatory Private Law: the Transformation of European Private Law from Autonomy to Functionalism in Competition and Regulation" (ERPL). The focus of the socio-legal project lies in the search for a normative model which could shape a selfsufficient European private legal order in its interaction with national private law systems. The project aims at a new-orientation of the

more »

... ctures and methods of European private law based on its transformation from autonomy to functionalism in competition and regulation. It suggests the emergence of a self-sufficient European private law, composed of three different layers (1) the sectorial substance of ERPL, (2) the general principlesprovisionally termed competitive contract lawand (3) common principles of civil law. It elaborates on the interaction between ERPL and national private law systems around four normative models: (1) intrusion and substitution, (2) conflict and resistance, (3) hybridisation and (4) convergence. It analyses the new order of values, enshrined in the concept of access justice (Zugangsgerechtigkeit). Abstract The impetus for this research stems from the assumption that by regulating the periphery of any legal relationship, the core is necessarilyto a lesser or greater extent depending on the circumstancesshook. The legal relationship we will evaluate in this contribution is that of contract law. Contract law is used as the basis to test the hypothesis that peripheral forces, in this instance increased regulation at the EU level, coupled with equal treatment, fundamental rights and EU citizenship, and, even more so, judicial intervention by the CJEU, are chipping away at the core of contract law in the Member States. The results of this, it is argued, are contributing to the European identity-building project.