Flash Eurobarometer 320 (European Contract Law in Business-to-Business Transactions)

Business attitudes towards cross‐border business‐to-business transactions and the usefulness of a European contract law.<br>Topics: most often used contract law for business-to-business transactions: national law of respondent’s country, national law of the state where the other party is based, national law of a third country, contract laws not related to a particular country; impact of each of the following obstacles on the company’s decision to sell to or buy cross border from businesses from other EU countries: language, agreeing on the foreign applicable law, finding information about foreign contract laws, cultural differences, tax regulations, formal requirements, resolving cross-border conflicts, obtaining legal advice on foreign contract laws, delivery problems, after-sales maintenance abroad; frequency of missed transactions due to the aforementioned obstacles; attitude towards a single European contract law; estimated increase of cross-border transactions due to a single European contract law; number of additional EU countries to sell to in case of the existence of a single European contract law; preferred kind of European contract law: law replacing the national contract laws, alternative law for cross-border transactions, alternative law for domestic and for cross-border transactions.

Demography: information about the company: number of employees, company size; involvement in business-to-business transactions; cross-border selling to or buying from other businesses; type of business-to-business transactions; total turnover in 2009; kind of sold products and services; main role in business-to-business transactions: buyer, seller, both; sales channels; number of EU countries cross-border transactions are made with.

Additionally coded was: interviewer ID; language of the interview; respondent ID; country; date of interview; time of the beginning of the interview; duration of the interview; type of phone line; call history; weighting factor.