The Meaning of ‘Natural Person’ and the Impact of the Constitution for Europe on the Development of European Private Law Guido Alpa* Abstract: European codes of private law have traditionally commenced with a concept of the person. In the development of private law in the European Union, we require a modern concept of the person, one which goes beyond the idea of the bearer of economic rights, to one which embraces ideas of human rights and social solidarity, as found in the Uni- versal Declaration of Human Rights and the Nice Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. I Will European Constitutional Law have an Impact on the ‘European Civil Code’? To speak of a ‘person’ in the legal world is to invite the problems inherent in some very diverse concepts and meanings.Today we are accustomed to regard the person as dig- nified by his entitlement to fundamental rights, but we should not forget that the idea of a person, understood as a human being who is inherently the owner of rights and obligations, is the outcome of a long and eventful journey. A journey that has, so to speak, been the reverse of what one would rationally have expected. It would be rea- sonable for the fundamental rights (such as those of life, health, and liberty) to come first, and to be followed by political, then economic, and then civil rights. But if we follow the traces of history, the idea of innate rights, belonging to the person as such, comes into being in the Seventeenth Century; but in codes and statutes the rights that are the first to be asserted are the economic rights, then the civil rights, then the political rights; and finally the human or fundamental rights. And even here there are differences between the various concepts of the categories of rights of the person underlying the meta-legal (philosophical, sociological, and religious) views of European Law Journal, Vol. 10, No. 6, November 2004, pp. 734–750. © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA * Professor of Civil Law, University of Rome La Sapienza, D.h.c. Universidad Complutense, Hon. Bencher Gray’s Inn, President of the Italian National Bar. The author is particularly grateful to Miss Anne Thomp- son for her kind and useful assistance in translating and editing this article and to Professor Hugh Collins for his invitation to participating in the debate.