Fifteen Eighty Four

We live in an age of grand challenges, from climate change and the digitalisation of markets to rising inequality. Yet legal systems struggle to respond effectively, constrained by entrenched disciplinary boundaries. Law and regulation, public and private law, and European Union (EU) law and national law often operate in separate silos, limiting meaningful dialogue. My book, Market Regulation and Private Law: The Quest for Reconciliation in European Private Law (Cambridge University Press, 2026), offers a holistic theoretical perspective on the relationship between market regulation and private law, with significant practical implications for a wide range of areas.   

Traditionally, relations between private individuals in the marketplace have been governed by private law. This area of law enables individuals to pursue their own interests while primarily seeking to ensure justice between them through doctrines such as good faith, misrepresentation, and the duty of care. It is enforced by aggrieved parties who bring claims before civil courts – a mechanism known as private enforcement. However, as markets have become increasingly regulated, particularly within the EU, private law now operates alongside market regulation in shaping interpersonal relations across areas ranging from product safety, consumer sales, and financial services to competition, digital services, and artificial intelligence. Unlike private law, market regulation is primarily designed to steer the behaviour of market participants in pursuit of public goals, such as market efficiency, sustainability, innovation, and consumer protection. It employs both public and private law instruments – such as authorisations for market entry and duties of care – and relies not only on private parties but also on regulatory agencies to ensure compliance, a mechanism known as public enforcement.

The collision between traditional, interpersonal justice-oriented private law and instrumentalist market regulation raises many questions. For instance, can a firm be held liable under private law for breaching regulatory duties? Can it comply with its regulatory duties yet still be in breach of its private law obligations? If a firm operates within a regulatory sandbox where regulatory requirements are temporarily relaxed, can it incur civil liability for harm arising from the experiment? Can aggrieved individuals rely on the findings of a regulatory agency in civil proceedings? To what extent can regulatory agencies be involved in providing compensation in cases of mass harm? Can a firm be subject to both an administrative fine and civil liability for the same regulatory violation? And can a whistleblower who exposes a regulatory breach be granted full immunity from civil liability?

These questions reveal tensions between the core values underpinning market regulation and private law: the common good and interpersonal justice; legal certainty and individual fairness; and uniformity and diversity. The central question underlying the book, therefore, is how market regulation and private law can be reconciled. To address this question, the book develops an integrated analytical framework that helps us better understand their interaction in both standard-setting and enforcement, within the EU and beyond. This novel framework emerges from analysing market regulation through the traditional private law lens and private law through the regulatory lens, along both descriptive and normative lines. It reflects elements of current legislative, judicial, and administrative practices across multiple jurisdictions and regulated sectors, and provides a basis for examining them.

I argue that market regulation and private law are two sides of the same coin. To reconcile them is to enable them to work in tandem, while acknowledging their distinctive characteristics and, where necessary, making trade-offs between the competing values that underpin them. This mode of interaction places demands on both discourses: private law should be receptive to the public interest logic of market regulation, while regulatory discourse should be receptive to the relational logic of private law. Fundamental rights – such as the right to private and family life, the right to non-discrimination, and the right to an effective remedy – can foster this interaction, serving as a bridge between market regulation and private law.  

Ultimately, reconciliation between market regulation and private law is essential to developing innovative responses to contemporary challenges. But how can this be achieved in practice? The book therefore also translates theory into practical guidance for legislators, courts, and regulatory agencies. It shows that such reconciliation can be pursued through incremental steps taken by each actor at both the EU and national levels. It further invites scholars and practitioners in regulation, public law, private law, law and economics, EU law, and national law to move beyond established modes of thinking and collaborate across disciplines while piecing together the reconciliation puzzle.