is an asset which should not be lost in a multicultural Europe c) Codification as such is an outdated concept, popular in the nineteenth century, but ignoring the needs of modern society; d)We should fear the influence of a"European Union bureaucracy, consisting largely of uprooted civil servants often entertaining an ambivalent relationship with their national legal culture. o All these fears and worries seem unfounded or grossly exaggerated to me. They resemble an emotional crossfire, characteristic of rearguard actions of the same kind as i had to fight working on the dutch civil code But this does not mean that they are irrelevant. For, roughly speaking, they may boil down to a very real obstacle that is probably the hidden force behind those emotions. to explain this, I should begin by showing you the enigmatic keyword QWERTY, well known by all of you, even if you are not aware of it I have in mind a well-known article by P.A. David in the American Economic Review of 1985, called: 'Clio and the Economics of QWErTY, clio is the muse of history QWERTY are the first six letters on the keyboard of your computer, as they also were the first six letters of the typewriter at the beginning of the previous century. They have been maintained on the keyboards of all our computers and survived the developments of hardware software, the internet and what not. In fact, they certainly do not represent the most effective order of letters for users of a keyboard, even if their language is English. Nevertheless, the combination will probably be maintained for a long time because it would be a disaster if everybody were to be forced to learn a new letter order. Davids article departed from the notion of hysterese, which is Greek for retardation, a term used in physics as well as in economics. David replaced it by the term pathdependence', well known by the specialists of law and economics. In my view, the importance of this phenomenon in the field of law is greatly underestimated. Sudden changes in a law system will always provoke resistance Legal scholars as well as legal practitioners will think that the advantages of innovation are not worthwhile compared to the loss of knowledge and skill entailed by it. They feel safe in the well-known surroundings of law's familiar edifice. I remind you of the citations from Atiyah and Scholten This is not matter of having a conservative attitude. What is behind it is the thought that the development of law should go by small steps, striking the right balance between innovation and continuity. In the case of codification or recod ification, find ing this balance will become a major issue. The new Dutch civil code is in many respects a continuation of the case law developed under the old one. Even the new Russian civil code, though it had see the advantage of this richness, which is obviously a serious obstacle to the transparency of this market especially after the ten candidate new Member States have entered Every unification has to start with a binding black-letter instrument, call it a codification or not. The argument seems to exclude any such instrument and, as a consequence, any unification. This is clearly contra to international practice. It should be noted that many national codes were in fact unifications( the German HGB and BgB, the Swiss ZGB, the US UCC) P. Legrand, Against a European Civil Code, MLR 1997, P. 44 ff, esp p. 51. This argument neglects that a European contract law, drafted by leading experts in this field and based on sufficient consensus within the European Union, will limit considerably the power of the European civil servants whose future regulations will have to fit within the framework of this legislation See also J Pen, ESB 1994.p 998is an asset which should not be lost in a multicultural Europe;8 c) Codification as such is an outdated concept, popular in the nineteenth century, but ignoring the needs of modern society;9 d) We should fear the influence of a ‘European Union bureaucracy, consisting largely of uprooted civil servants often entertaining an ambivalent relationship with their national legal culture’.10 All these fears and worries seem unfounded or grossly exaggerated to me. They resemble an emotional crossfire, characteristic of rearguard actions of the same kind as I had to fight working on the Dutch civil code. But this does not mean that they are irrelevant. For, roughly speaking, they may boil down to a very real obstacle that is probably the hidden force behind those emotions. To explain this, I should begin by showing you the enigmatic keyword ‘QWERTY’, well known by all of you, even if you are not aware of it. I have in mind a well-known article by P.A. David in the American Economic Review of 1985, called: ‘Clio and the Economics of QWERTY’.11 Clio is the muse of history. ‘QWERTY’ are the first six letters on the keyboard of your computer, as they also were the first six letters of the typewriter at the beginning of the previous century. They have been maintained on the keyboards of all our computers and survived the developments of hardware, software, the internet and what not. In fact, they certainly do not represent the most effective order of letters for users of a keyboard, even if their language is English. Nevertheless, the combination will probably be maintained for a long time because it would be a disaster if everybody were to be forced to learn a new letter order. David’s article departed from the notion of ‘hysterese’, which is Greek for retardation, a term used in physics as well as in economics. David replaced it by the term ‘pathdependence’, well known by the specialists of law and economics. In my view, the importance of this phenomenon in the field of law is greatly underestimated. Sudden changes in a law system will always provoke resistance. Legal scholars as well as legal practitioners will think that the advantages of innovation are not worthwhile compared to the loss of knowledge and skill entailed by it. They feel safe in the well-known surroundings of law’s familiar edifice. I remind you of the citations from Atiyah and Scholten. This is not matter of having a conservative attitude. What is behind it is the thought that the development of law should go by small steps, striking the right balance between innovation and continuity. In the case of codification or recodification, finding this balance will become a major issue. The new Dutch civil code is in many respects a continuation of the case law developed under the old one. Even the new Russian civil code, though it had to 8 Contract law is essentially linked to economic issues relating to the Common Market. It is difficult to see the advantage of this ‘richness’, which is obviously a serious obstacle to the transparency of this market , especially after the ten candidate new Member States have entered. 9 Every unification has to start with a binding black-letter instrument, call it a codification or not. The argument seems to exclude any such instrument and, as a consequence, any unification. This is clearly contrary to international practice. It should be noted that many national codes were in fact unifications (the German HGB and BGB, the Swiss ZGB, the US UCC). 10 P. Legrand, Against a European Civil Code, MLR 1997, p. 44 ff, esp. p. 51. This argument neglects that a European contract law, drafted by leading experts in this field and based on sufficient consensus within the European Union, will limit considerably the power of the European civil servants whose future regulations will have to fit within the framework of this legislation. 11 See also J. Pen, ESB 1994, p. 998