The “Coronavirus and Private Law” project aims to identify and evaluate the instruments available in private law applicable in Catalonia that allow the allocation of risks – and, in general, the regulation and resolution of the different conflicts raised by the COVID pandemic -19 in private relationships. The analysis of the different risk allocation mechanisms is structured into four areas, on which the most significant repercussions of the pandemic have occurred: (i) contract law; (ii) right to damages; (iii) right of the person and the family; and (iv) law and information technologies, in particular, the protection of personal data.

Based on a qualitative and quantitative analysis of the application of the risk allocation instruments in each of the aforementioned areas –especially, based on the examination of the regulations prior to the start of the pandemic and those enacted afterwards, as well as of its impact on judicial activity in civil jurisdiction–, the project seeks to formulate legislative policy proposals for Spanish and Catalan legislators, which contribute to minimizing social costs and generating legal certainty and trust in legal-private relations .

In addition to the conformation of this set of good normative practices for the improvement, adaptation or reform of Private Law and its analytical discussion, the project also has as a theoretical objective to contrast if indeed the impact of the pandemic has a systemic and profound scope in the Private law, which goes beyond the involvement of institutions, rules or particular aspects, reaching to disrupt basic and structural notions such as the concept of contractual agreement or the operation of extracontractual civil liability.