The Diplomatic Conference on the Unification of Law Governing the International Sale of Goods (The Hague, 2–25 April, 1964) has drawn up two conventions: the Convention relating to a Uniform Law on the International Sale of Goods, with one annex, and the Convention relating to a Uniform Law on the Formation of Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, with two annexes. Twenty-eight States were represented at the Conference. Intergovernmental organizations and the International Chamber of Commerce were represented as observers.

The report is divided into five sections. The first deals with the nature of fundamental rights in general. Both the classical rights of freedom and the social fundamental rights spring from a particular social situation against the background of a particular way of thinking. Positive law never develops accidentally. It develops because circumstances call for it. The same applies to the development of fundamental rights. They never develop by accident. Their materialisation is never the outcome of an arbitrary act. They develop when and where human freedom calls for special protection.

In 1960 A.J.P. Tammes and D.J. Veegens presented reports on the Convention. Since that date some comprehensive studies have appeared, notably those of Van Emde Boas and Meuwissen. The present report builds on these publications and, therefore, does not deal with the Convention's origins and early years, but concentrates on the last decade.

Bellekom: The speaker referred to the two pillars of the conception of Meuwissen: 1. fundamental freedoms contain a constitutive element; they do not say only what is, but also what ought to be: 2. fundamental freedoms are an expression of values. The latter element can also be found in German literature, where the Constitution (containing within it fundamental freedoms and human rights) is referred to as a “Wertordnung” (order of values). Fundamental freedoms are, according to that theory, values, along with others, that can be brought to bear in a concrete case. The danger of this idea is that this “Wertordnung” will amount to an order of vested interests, one that preserves existing social-economic structures and limits the possibilities for minorities. In order to show that this danger is not an imaginary one, he referred to matters such as the “Berufsverbot” (exclusion from public service) and the exclusion of lawyers from- the defence in Germany. In those very cases an appeal was made, by way of justifying those practices, to the “freiheitlich-demokratische” (liberal-democratic) value of the Constitution, a value that is assumed to be a basic element of the Constitution, a value that outweighs even fundamental rights such as equal eligibility for the public service and the right to defend oneself through legal assistance of one's own choice.