Omnia tempus habent. Arriverà il tempo di un codice civile europeo

A civil code for Europe is an old question, discussed since the late decades of last century. Sometimes it reappears, and this was the occasion in a meeting in Pavia dedicated to that subject. This writing reproduces the final presentation summing up the conclusions of a two days session. The author goes through the question of a European codification again, examining the arguments in favour and against. The final impression is that on the one hand a true unique market cannot exist without a common framework of rules; on the other hand, as it happened in the case of national codifications, a deep cultural debate is necessary, accompanied by a scientific, dogmatic indeed, common elaboration of the categories by which a unitary code can be constructed.