ETHIC IN CIVIL BUSINESS LAW AND TRADE CONFLICTS
On March 5, 2017, the visiting professor of BINUS Business Law Department Prof. Dr. iur. Stefan Koos delivered his paper on ethic in civil business law in front of participants in the seminar of business competition law organized by BINUS Business Law Department and the Commission for the Supervision of Business Competition (KPPU). The seminar was located at the auditorium of the Alam Sutera Campus of BINUS University.
Stefan, the professor of Munich-based Bundeswehr University, started his presentation by asking what ethic means. Then he talked about the integration of ethic in a Roman civil law system and revealed some examples of ethic-discussions in the German competition law. To underline the relationship between ethic and business practices, Stefan explained the ethical problems in anti-discrimination law and labour law.
According to Stefan, legal compliance and ethical behavior is not identical. General rules cannot always meet full ethical requirements. If a law is generally unethical, it is unconstitutional. If it is not generally unethical, then an ethical rule must be integrated as corrective in the legal application of the law (undeterminated legal notion; self imposed codes of conduct). Ethical behavior of companies must be compatible with competition patterns. Without effective flanking legislative measurements to support the competitive position of the legally compliant companies, there will be not ethical business surrounding.
After lunch on the same day, Stefan also gave another lecture for students who joined the committee of the seminar. He presented his lecture on the topic of trade conflicts between economic blocs in the light of WTO law. Stefan identified several problems related to the trade conflicts experienced by some countries in the European Union and explained how they could be resolved. (***)
