CONTRACTS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL SALE OF GOODS - THE SIGNIFICANCE OF “FUNDAMENTAL BREACH” IN THE VIENNA CONVENTION, 1980. Irish Business Law, Ir. BL 1999 2(3), 82-87. By Maria O’Neill, Introduction - Contracts for the International Sale of Goods and the Vienna Convention. The Vienna Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods,1980 (CISG) was promoted by the United Nations as a replacement for the Uniform Law on the International Sale of Goods (ULIS) and the Uniform Law on the Formation of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods (ULFIL). It has been ratified by countries around the globe with legal and social traditions situate each end of every possible spectrum, from the arch-capitalist, United States of America, 1 communist China 2 and Cuba, 3 countries following the Islamic Sharia Law such as Iraq 4 and Syria, 5 and developing countries such as Romania 6 and Georgia. 7 It is designed for easy use by both trader and lawyer, 8 and for this reason it avoids the use of conceptual legal terminology. The Vienna Convention is the product of a synthesis of legal systems and is the “fruit of world wide compromise”. 9 As such it does not ‘fit comfortably with the existing law of every country which adopts it’. 10 It is equally authoritative in each of its six languages, Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish, 11 and is to be interpreted by national courts, without the help of a central interpreting body. Against this background of disparate legal and socioeconomic views, the creation of (and the subsequent uniform interpretation of) the Convention has been, and will continue to be, quite a challenge. The objective of the drafters of the Vienna Convention was to provide more objective principle and more precision in interpretation of the international rules governing contracts for the international sale of goods than arose from the ULIS. 12 The question which this article focuses upon is whether there is sufficient clarity in the convention in the definition of ‘fundamental breach’, and certainty in how it will be applied. In its report on the Convention, the Law Society of England and Wales gave 1 Signed 31.8.1981, ratified 11.12.1986 and in force 1.1.1988, subject to reservation on Article 95. 2 Signed 30.9.1981, ratified 11.12.1986, and in force 1.1.1988, subject to reservations on Articles 95 and 96. 3 Ratified 2.11.1994, and in force 1.12.1995. 4 Ratified 5.3.1990, in force 1.4.1991. 5 Ratified 19.10.1982, in force 1.1.1988. 6 Ratified 22.5.1991, and in force 1.6.1992. 7 Ratified 16.8.1994, in force 1.9.1995. 8 Ibid. footnote no. 21. 9 Ibid. footnote no. 1. 10 Ibid. footnote no. 2. 11 Final paragraph to the preamble to the Convention. 12 Ibid. footnote no. 1. CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Abertay Research Portal