In the period of digitalization of law, the criterion for distinguishing private relations is the interest underlying them: private, public or private-public. In the world of modern and digital law, which is marked by a significant level of legal unification, in particular in the framework of the institutions of a united Europe, the urgent problem is the fragmentation of law as a decentralized factor. The purpose of the article is to establish the presence and outline the boundaries of such a specific entity as international contract law on the basis of a study of the main options for regulating contractual relations of a private nature. The author believes that questions of the legal nature of commercial law are controversial. Some scholars are of the opinion that the inclusion of a public element in this regulatory system is just an attempt to artificially separate commercial law into an independent branch of law by grouping the norms of civil and administrative tribunal. The scientific literature is analyzed in the context of the existence of competence to establish peremptory norms for the Member States by the institutions of the European Union. The author concludes that international contract law is not a fiction but a real regulatory system, the object of legal regulation of which are crossborder contractual relations.