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The interplay between financial regulation and civil liability in the legal order of the European Union provided the theme for the book entitled ‘Financial Regulation and Civil Liability in European Law’. This framing chapter presents the research design and major findings of this book project, mapping and analysing the original assessments by the contributing authors. In particular, it examines whether there is a coordinated approach to EU financial regulation and civil liability across (a) different sectors of financial services and activities, such as payments, credit, and securities, and (b) the various actors involved in public, private, and hybrid enforcement, such as courts, alternative dispute resolution bodies, and financial regulators. Further, it outlines directions for cross-sector and cross-actor coordination to develop more fully at EU and national level. Overall, the chapter highlights the need to fundamentally rethink the role of civil liability, and private law remedies more generally, as a regulatory and compensatory tool in European financial law, and sets out an analytical framework – with both theoretical and empirical components – for further inquiry.

The instrumental use of private law, in particular contract law, by the EU raises a complex issue concerning the relationship between contract‐related regulation and traditional private law and underlines the need for conceptualising the interplay between the two from the contract governance perspective. The present article aims to apply this new analytical approach in the investment services field where there is considerable tension between the EU investor protection regulation embodied in the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive (MiFID I and MiFID II) and national private laws. The article explores various models of relationship between investor protection regulation and traditional private law within a multi‐level EU legal order, considering the strengths and weaknesses of each field in pursuing public and private interests involved in financial contracting. This analysis also offers some lessons for the broader narrative of how European integration in regulated areas dominated by public supervision and enforcement could proceed.

Since its creation, European Union (hereinafter: ‘the EU’) has experienced various enlargements. In 1973, Denmark, Ireland and the United Kingdom joined the EU. Greece became a Member in 1981 and was followed by Spain and Portugal in 1986. Austria, Finland and Sweden acceded to the EU in 1995. In 2004, ten Central and Eastern European Countries (hereinafter: ‘the CEECs’) became EU members. Finally, another two CEECs, i.e. Bulgaria and Romania, joined the EU on 1 January 2007. What impact did previous enlargements have on national systems of private law? It is an important question since there are on-going accession negotiations with Croatia and Turkey and other countries (Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania Serbia and Montenegro, Ukraine and Moldova) are also interested in acceding to the EU. As well as these countries, Russia has also developed specific relationships with the EU which affect its private law system. Learning from previous experience may help in structuring a better pattern of Europeanization. But the broader question is whether the process of ‘Europeanization’ of private law in the CEECs can be considered as concluded with membership or rather whether ‘regional policies’ are needed to contextualize the implementation of EU law and to govern its spill-overs. This special issue brings together four different contributions on the impact of EU law on the national private law systems in the CEECs in three important fields of regulatory private law, i.e. competition law, consumer law and securities law, which have been profoundly affected by EU law. The overall conclusion is that the Europeanization of private law in the CEECs can no longer be regarded as a one way process in which the EU defines the standards to be implemented in the CEECs without a thorough analysis of the starting conditions and special needs of these countries. What is needed is an approach which turns the perspective upside down and looks at the EU enlargement policy through the eyes of the CEECs.