ECJ new guidelines for identification of place of delivery in international sales involving carriage of goods

Abstract

The Court of Justice of the Union has recently addressed some doubts on the meaning of Article 5.1 b) of the Brussels Regulation 44/2001, related to the place of deliveryof goods. In two recent decisions (Cases C-381/98, Car Trim, and C-87/10, Electrosteel), the Court has sets new standards to be followed by national courts in order to determine the place of delivery of goods in international sales involving the carriage of goods. Together, these decisions represent a shift in the ECJ previous case law to a line of interpretation that departs from the use of lex contractus. The TJUE builds an autonomous definition in which, for the first time, contractual clauses referring to Incoterms will have a decisive value.