Insurance Contracts and Private International Law: A Comparison Between Turkish and EU Law

The objective of this seminar was to analyze the interactions between Insurance Law and Private International Law (PIL) with a comparative perspective between Turkish and the EU laws. Insurance contracts create a legal relationship between the insurance company on the one side and the policyholder, the insured and the third-party beneficiary on the other. It is presumed that these parties are, particularly when they are qualified as consumers, in an economically weaker position and they are less experienced in legal matters than the insurer. In the objective of protecting these parties, national laws contain some mandatory rules to limit the freedom of contract and provide the supervision of a public authority. This need for protection is also present in the context of the PIL when the insurance contract or the dispute arising in relation to it contains a foreign element at conflict of laws and conflict of jurisdictions levels. In this respect, a comparative study of the Turkish PIL and the EU PIL is useful to note the differences between these two regimes and potential areas where there is a need for harmonization.