Despite its apparent fragmentation, the Union’s private law must be seen as a coherent
legal system, which is constitutionally based on a mutual interplay between private
liberties and market regulation and designed to achieve economic (and social) integration
between the Member States. As banking law illustrates, fundamental principles
and public policies tend to flow into individual rights and duties, particularly
with regard to consumer protection. Since the Union’s private law has to coexist with
those of the Member States, it must draw on the best instances of national cultures,
which, conversely, have to traverse a process of Europeanisation. Stefan Grundmann
urged scholars to equip European private law with an apparatus of legal methodology
capable of ensuring its coherent interpretation and supplementation and of vouching
for its unity.