DEFENSES IN THE CIVIL LAWSUIT: A SHORT COMPARISON OF REGULATIONS FROM ROMANIA AND FRANCE

Any person who is a party to a lawsuit acts or reacts: the claimant raises claims and the defendant counters them.

Under this litigation context, the Romanian NCPC expresses for the first time in our procedural legislation the modern concept according to which defense is a way of expressing the civil action and makes a fundamental classification of the defenses in justice (“substantive” and “procedural”). The action includes two categories of procedural means: those for the protection of the subjective right claimed by one of the parties and those for providing the defense of the lawsuit parties .

In France, this concept, which reflects the diversity of civil action and of the means of defense, has been regulated for over four decades. This is precisely why we intended to make a comparison with the French judicial system, which can be beneficial on several plans, because legislative reforms are often preceded by comparative studies.

Such a comparison improves the critical knowledge of our law: Romanian lawyers can better perceive what is latent, constant, which has been insufficiently explored in the own law. Foreign jurisprudence may also provide new assessment elements to the Romanian legislator either to apply common rules to several states or to construe the national law.

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