Dichiarazione ONU sui diritti dei contadini e diritto internazionale privato dell'Unione europea

On 17 December 2018 the United Nations General Assembly adopted by a majority the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, stressing the importance of agricultural production and recognizing individual and collective rights granted to people living and working in rural areas. The paper aims at assessing the possible impact of the principles enshrined in the Declaration on the system of private international law sources, moving from the general assumption that UN declaration of principles may contribute to the interpretation of domestic law. As peasants and other workers in rural areas can qualify, under the 2018 Declaration, as weaker parties, the paper attempts to clarify to what extent solutions enacted in EU private international law for other categories of weaker parties (such as employees or consumers) with regard to conflict-of-laws and to jurisdictional competence in contractual matters may be extendable to peasants. However, the general approach of EU instruments concerning judicial cooperation in civil matters does not seem to be especially open to receiving the instances of protection of the rights of categories of weaker parties, which are not expressly mentioned in those instruments. Accordingly, as the law now stands, only recourse to general clauses (fraude à la loi, public policy, overriding mandatory rules) may lead to give some consideration to the special position of peasants and other workers in rural areas and to adapt private international law rules to the protection of their fundamental rights.