The European System of Banking Law. A Tribute to Stefan Grundmann

Despite its apparent fragmentation, the Union’s private law must be seen as a coherent legal system, which is constitutionally based on a mutual interplay between private liberties and market regulation and designed to achieve economic (and social) integration between the Member States. As banking law illustrates, fundamental principles and public policies tend to flow into individual rights and duties, particularly with regard to consumer protection. Since the Union’s private law has to coexist with those of the Member States, it must draw on the best instances of national cultures, which, conversely, have to traverse a process of Europeanisation. Stefan Grundmann urged scholars to equip European private law with an apparatus of legal methodology capable of ensuring its coherent interpretation and supplementation and of vouching for its unity.