Conclusion of contract and legal certainty: Application of international standards in Serbian contract law

Abstract

The paper addresses the rules governing the conclusion of contract from the aspect of the prevailing international standards in this area and their comparison with the appropriate solutions of the Serbian Law of Obligations. The international standards in the field of conclusion of contracts have been analysed primarily in the light of the relevant rules of the CISG, as one of the most widely accepted international conventions in the field of contract law, while also giving due consideration to the solutions of other important international documents and projects of uniform contract law, such as UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts, Principles of European Contract Law and the Draft Common Frame of Reference for European Private Law. Among the plethora of issues relevant to the conclusion of the contract, the paper places the focus on those which seem most important from the perspective of their comparative analysis with the solutions of the Serbian Law of Obligations: negotiations, offer (contents of the offer, to whom the offer is addressed, revocability of the offer), acceptance of the offer (contents of the statement indicating acceptance of the offer) and the time of conclusion of the contract. Each of these issues has been separately analysed and evaluated in an endeavour to identify those solutions that contribute to achieving a higher degree of legal certainty in the relations arising from the contract conclusion, without standing in the way of party autonomy in this area.