differences are of limited significance in a restatement, which offers a resource to legislators courts and arbitrators but not a threat to existing national laws The assertion that the similarities in European legal systems are greater than the differences seems to me a somewhat facile way of brushing aside the very d ifferent methods of legal reasoning and of nterpretation of contracts, even if in many cases the end results are similar. Second, who is to do the work? Surely not the Commission, which lacks both the time and the technical expertise to do it. But binding law cannot be left to scholars, since the democratic process requires the involvement of all interest sectors, including, of course, government and the Community institutions. So the nature of the product changes from a work of scholarship couched in clear and comprehensible terms to a product derived from political pressures and compromises which will result in complete distortion. And then, of course, it passes through the Translation Service, by which time it will be barely recognisable as the offspring of the PECL This brings me to my third point, language. Language is a serious problem. Parallel texts of high quality can be produced only by those who work together in the different need to work together. The production of a parallel text by a drafting committee produces cl languages and who are experts not only in their own language but in their own law. and the something wholly d ifferent in quality from a translation done by a translation agency This is not intended to imply any criticism of the Commission's highly professional Translation Service, which possesses not only well-qualified staff but also access to powerful data bases But quite apart from the fact that the Service works under great pressure, its translation skills lie in language, not in the substantive law content of what is being translated My own experience as chairman of different drafting committees of Study Groups and Diplomatic Conferences over a period of many years is that a drafting committee can handle two parallel texts at most in the time available to it. Given the absence of the time pressure imposed on a study group meeting or a Diplomatic Conference it might be possible to add a third language, though this alone would produce an exponential increase in the work. Any collaborative drafting work in more than three languages would in my view be impossibl Finally, let us consider the huge implications of enactment of the Code. Every textbook, every encyclopaed ic work would have to be rewritten. Every scholar, every to be prepared to surrender a substantial slice of hard-won knowledge and experience and c practitioner, every jud ge would have to be retrained in a major field of law, and would hav return to the law school; good for the law schools, of course, but at what cost to national legal systems, let alone national cultures and traditions! As Julius Hermann von Kirchner so aptly remarked 155 years ago: .. three amending words from the lawgiver and an entire library becomes waste paper.. 9 Do we really want to consign to the dustbin of history the elegant prose of Portals in the French Code Civil or the limpid clarity of Huber in the Swiss Civil Code? Did germany wish to jettison its bGB when it underwent a major revision coming into effect only a year ago? And what of the relatively recently revised Dutch Civil Code? We might also ask why are some of our leading scholars of European comparative contract law so keen to destroy European comparative contract law? II Envoi In a lecture in 1848 on Die Wertlosigkeit der Jurisprudenz als Wissenschaft: .. drei berichtigende Worte des Gesetzgebers und ganze Bibliotheken werden zu Makulaturdifferences are of limited significance in a restatement, which offers a resource to legislators, courts and arbitrators but not a threat to existing national laws. The assertion that the similarities in European legal systems are greater than the differences seems to me a somewhat facile way of brushing aside the very different methods of legal reasoning and of interpretation of contracts, even if in many cases the end results are similar. Second, who is to do the work? Surely not the Commission, which lacks both the time and the technical expertise to do it. But binding law cannot be left to scholars, since the democratic process requires the involvement of all interest sectors, including, of course, government and the Community institutions. So the nature of the product changes from a work of scholarship couched in clear and comprehensible terms to a product derived from political pressures and compromises which will result in complete distortion. And then, of course, it passes through the Translation Service, by which time it will be barely recognisable as the offspring of the PECL. This brings me to my third point, language. Language is a serious problem. Parallel texts of high quality can be produced only by those who work together in the different languages and who are experts not only in their own language but in their own law. And they need to work together. The production of a parallel text by a drafting committee produces something wholly different in quality from a translation done by a translation agency. This is not intended to imply any criticism of the Commission’s highly professional Translation Service, which possesses not only well-qualified staff but also access to powerful data bases. But quite apart from the fact that the Service works under great pressure, its translation skills lie in language, not in the substantive law content of what is being translated. My own experience as chairman of different drafting committees of Study Groups and Diplomatic Conferences over a period of many years is that a drafting committee can handle two parallel texts at most in the time available to it. Given the absence of the time pressure imposed on a study group meeting or a Diplomatic Conference it might be possible to add a third language, though this alone would produce an exponential increase in the work. Any collaborative drafting work in more than three languages would in my view be impossible. Finally, let us consider the huge implications of enactment of the Code. Every textbook, every encyclopaedic work would have to be rewritten. Every scholar, every practitioner, every judge would have to be retrained in a major field of law, and would have to be prepared to surrender a substantial slice of hard-won knowledge and experience and return to the law school; good for the law schools, of course, but at what cost to national legal systems, let alone national cultures and traditions! As Julius Hermann von Kirchner so aptly remarked 155 years ago: ‘. . . three amending words from the lawgiver and an entire library becomes waste paper . . .’9 Do we really want to consign to the dustbin of history the elegant prose of Portalis in the French Code Civil or the limpid clarity of Huber in the Swiss Civil Code? Did Germany wish to jettison its BGB when it underwent a major revision coming into effect only a year ago? And what of the relatively recently revised Dutch Civil Code? We might also ask: why are some of our leading scholars of European comparative contract law so keen to destroy European comparative contract law? III Envoi 9 In a lecture in 1848 on Die Wertlosigkeit der Jurisprudenz als Wissenschaft: ‘. . . drei berichtigende Worte des Gesetzgebers und ganze Bibliotheken werden zu Makulatur.’