PROTECTION OF THE PARTICIPANTS OF CONTRACTUAL RELATIONS IN THE CONTEXT OF APPROACHING THE LEGAL ORDERS OF UKRAINE AND THE EU

In the article, the author examines the peculiarities of the protection of the rights and interests of the parties to contractual obligations in the context of the recodification of civil legislation and bringing it into line with EU law. The author analysed the soft law of the EU in this area and focused attention on national regulation in the researched area. The author focuses on the problems of legislative regulation of the right to stop the performance of the counter-obligation and release the debtor from liability. The generalized formulations of the concepts of reasonableness of expectation, essentiality of non-performance, sufficiency of the debtor's explanations, proposed by the EU soft law do not seem unreasonable to the author. The specified list cannot be exhaustive and the circumstances that may occur under different contracts may vary so much that they cannot even be properly verified. Therefore, such a generalized position can serve as a good example of expanding the freedom of contract, which is required by domestic legislation. The author concludes that the elimination of shortcomings by the debtor can be considered as a way of protecting both the debtor and the creditor. Attention is focused on the expediency of defining the concept of significant non-fulfilment of an obligation. The methods of protection provided by the EU contract law, which are defined in the publication, indicate the need to rethink the domestic concept of contractual relations within the framework of the recodification of the civil legislation of Ukraine and bring it into compliance with EU law. The author is convinced of the expediency of saturating contract law with such means and ways of protecting the parties, which will not only be aimed at the protection itself but will also serve as an important element of expanding the freedom of contract and contractual security from the point of view of increasing the role of proper performance of the concluded contract.