Together with limited liability companies, partnerships (including partnership firms and limited partnerships) make up the majority of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the Netherlands. Partnerships also play a major role in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom. On 1 January 2012 Curaçao introduced a new law for partnerships which is quite different to the Dutch law. In Aruba, a bill has been proposed in parliament to amend the partnership law; the proposed changes would make the law there, too, very different from the current Dutch regulations. Moreover, neither the new rules in Curaçao nor the proposed law for Aruba are in sync with the current proposals for new regulations on partnerships in the Netherlands. The same goes for the proposed introduction in the Aruban Civil Code of a new Book 2 (legal entity law): not only the wording of this code but also its content diverge in significant ways from the Dutch Civil Code.

These developments raise questions about uniformity. How are decisions by the Supreme Court of the Netherlands to be interpreted and applied in the Caribbean part of the Kingdom? Research carried out by Jos Hamers, as chair, will make an important contribution to promoting uniformity. He will complement the existing expertise within the faculty in the fields of national and interregional legal entity and partnership law, running and teaching courses in this area. Together with Mieke Olaerts (professor of Comparative and National Company Law), he will also play a leading role in the Institute for Corporate Law, Governance and Innovation Policy (ICGI).