Drawn from those presented at the October 2005 conference held in Bremen, these papers report on a joint project supervised by the U. of Bremen and U. of Oxford. They describe why the protection of non-professional sureties works as a crucible of modern civil law and how European private law relates to the social dimension in terms of uniformity. They also include reports specific to EU member nations, such as German's laws on family suretyships, Austrian responses to German developments, French and Belgian forms of protection, the fragmented approach of The Netherlands, the prophylactic and procedural approach of England, the caution of the Scots and the boldness of the Irish, searches for protection in Italy and Slovenia and affirmations of it in Portugal, and complications in Nordic countries. The collection closes with a proposal on a trans-European code and comparative remarks.