Despite the effects of globalization, regional and national developments are still an obstacle to the quest for worldwide unification of Private International Law. Numerous contributions to this volume of the Yearbook of Private International Law (2002) are devoted to such developments.;The entire column ""Doctrine"" deals with the extremely important conflict developments in the European Union. The fact that rules of private international law have become part of the ""acquis communaitaire"" under the Treaty of Amsterdam does not seem to exclude national legislation. The best example is the fact that Belgium is now in the last phase of adopting a new Private International Law Act, the draft of which is presented in this volume. This shows that the tradition of national conflict of laws is still strong in the EU Member States and continues to develop parallel to the European quest for universalism. The achievement of the Inter-American Conference, presented in this volume in the column ""News from Washington"", is another important example of important regional developments.
