Читать книгу Dimensiones y desafíos del seguro de responsabilidad civil - Abel B. Veiga Copo - Страница 27

Liability insurance exists in two forms: as a voluntary insurance it is taken out by the policyholder and meant to protect against the financial risks arising from its liability. Many undertakings stipulate liability insurance commensurate with the risks they incur which have a greater variety and may be much higher in internal market transactions than in domestic business. As a compulsory insurance, liability insurance primarily purports to protect the third-party victim. It would of course be possible to conceive of an indemnity insurance that directly covers the third-party’s loss. However, in a compulsory liability insurance, the protection is channeled through the policyholder’s liability; the insured event is not the accident or the occurrence of the loss as such, but only insofar as the policyholder’s liability for that loss can be assessed.

Voluntary liability insurance is a matter of contract and contract law. To date, the only legal provisions of the Union covering voluntary liability insurance contracts are those concerning the pre-contractual information duty under the Solvency II Directive2. In essence, however, the legal regime of voluntary liability insurance contracts is established by the national law of the Member States. A first attempt at European harmonisation of general insurance contract law failed in the 1980s3. The Project Group Restatement of European Insurance Contract Law has renewed those efforts since 1999 and submitted proposals for a European Regulation based on a comparative assessment of national laws; the Principles of European Insurance Contract Law (PEICL) published in 2016 also deal with liability insurance4. So far, however, the European Commission has not taken the initiative for the adoption of a common European insurance contract law, neither in general nor with regards to liability insurance in particular.