Droit économique et droit international privé. Présentation – Ouverture

Economic law and private international law also known as conflict of law, have complex relationships, especially in this globalization context. As a legal expression of the State regulatory power aiming at defining and regulating economic relationships and behaviors in the market, economic law can only be in conflict with private international which is, in principle, neutral in its application. This conflicting relationship between the two branches of law has extensively contributed to the development and evolution of private international law. Hence, neutral at the beginning, private international law has started not only to incorporate ?non-neutral? and ?proactive? rules, but also to develop new legal methods of regulating private international relationships. Such new rules and methods developed by private international law are applicable concurrently with the ?traditional? rule of conflict which used to be the distinguishing ?feature? of private international law. Inversely, economic law has at the same time being influenced by this very evolution that private international law has undergone. Hence, the principle of party autonomy which allows parties to choose the applicable law, to conclude forum choice agreements or to privatize the resolution of their commercial dispute, by arbitrage for instance, has influenced the evolution of economic law itself. To cope with this evolution, economic law has become more liberal, more pragmatic and closer to the private operators. This present article presents the outstanding contributions of this special issue of the RIDE devoted to the interfaces between economic law and private international law, analyzes the conflicting rationales of these two branches of law, and contemplates the perspective of their respective evolution.