The Harmonization of Property Law

The property law is the most difficult part in the harmonization of private law because of its characteristics. At present, the efforts of unification and harmonization made in this field focus on two important aspects: transfer of ownership of movables and security in movables. The first involves the harmonization of two kinds of modes about the transfer of movables: the consensual systems and the systems based on tradition; the latter involves the confirmation of different kinds of security on movables and the harmonization of concrete regulations in different countries. On the one hand, the achievements which have been made in this field adopt “soft law” as the legislative technology, which is easier to be accepted by the national laws comparing with the international convention; on the other hand, they adopt flexible and practical attitudes on legislative policies. Some efforts have been made to harmonize the property law, for there is a need of harmonization in this field as well. But comparing to contract and commercial law, it is more difficult to establish an uniform regulation in this field. Maybe the time to harmonize the property law is not ripe.