The development of dutch law 71 country was hesitant to do away with Molenfgraaff’s creation which moreover did not stand in the way of having Bills of Lading governed by the Hague Rules. But in the early fifties our Government took the intent to ratify the Bill of Lading Convention and had in 1955 prof. Cleveringa present his draft for a new reform. Cleveringa purposely did not insert the Hague Rules as an entity in our Code, but did intersperse their provisions where it would logically fit in the existing text. Not all provisions were taken over, among other the gold-value-clause for the packagelimitation, in which respect our Government had made a permitted reservation. The / 600,—limit made place for a / 1250,— limit, in accordance with the then-time value of £100.—. A novelty which in 1955 brought a difference between Dutch- and other countries’ Hague Rules law was that the new insertions had a wider scope than the Hague Rules themselves: they were to be applied not only to bills of lading but also to charter-parties. Of course Dutch shipowners complained that this novelty did put themon an unduly unequal footing in their foreign competition, because they were not entitled to insert negligence-clauses in their charter-parties. In 1969 an intermediate reform statute brought a change and once again, according to Dutch law, charters are permitted to use negligence clauses. Finally it may deserve attention that Cleveringa in his Note of Explanation in 1955 urged for a uniform interpretation of the new provisions; because they formpart of an international treaty, interpretation should primarily be derived from other Hague Rulecountries’ case-law on similar questions of interpretation. In this thought Cleveringa has his followers, but there are dissenters who cannot be ignored, as Loeff in his Vervoer ter Zee (Carriage over sea), published early 1981. 6. Right now, a new Dutch ocean-carriage law is approaching its final stage. This law is only a part of the all-over Dutch law reform started in 1948 originally in the hands of one man, the renowned prof. Meijers of Leyden University; after his death in 1954 this task passed to an increasing number of expert-drafters. In this huge operation the purely traditional barrier between ‘civil’ and ‘commercial’ law has been removed as presently lacking any substantial importance. All parts form the new Civil Code. The new provisions on Persons are in force since 1971, those on Real property and on General law of obligations, contract and tort have passed our Parliament. Prof. Schadee, whose words to a Gothenburg audience of 8 years ago I already quoted, was entrusted with drafting a new Code-‘book’ on Means
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