A harmonisation of European law presupposes sound mutual knowledge of the jurisdictions involved in the harmonisation process. However, partly due to language problems it is not always easy to obtain information about all these jurisdictions, especially as far as new developments are concerned. Against this background, the European Centre of Tort and Insurance Law decided to publish a Yearbook on European Tort Law containing reports on the most interesting new developments in the field of tort law in different European countries.
The present Yearbook on European Tort law includes reports on EU Member States, Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Poland as well as an overview of the developments in the field of EC law. Additionally, it was decided to include one non-European country in every Yearbook - for this volume South Africa, with its highly interesting mixture of civil law and common law, was chosen. Furthermore, the Yearbook includes a short comparative overview and two essays on key issues of tort law. The essays, as well as the most important results of the country reports and some comparative remarks, were presented and discussed at the 1st Annual Conference on European Tort Law in Vienna on 5 April 2002.