scholarly journals The Relevance of the European Consumer Protection Law for the Development of the European Contract Law

2007 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 131
Author(s):  
Francesco A Schurr
Keyword(s):  
European Community ◽  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Contract ◽  
Consumer Law ◽  
European Consumer ◽  
Business To Consumer ◽  
Further Development ◽  
European Contract Law

This paper deals with the interaction of consumer law and contract law in the European Union. Over the last two decades the European legislature has adopted many legislative measures in the field of consumer protection that were designed to strengthen the single market and to avoid distortion of competition. Thus the European legislature tried to approximate or harmonise consumer protection standards within the European Community and consequently created a new layer of supranational contract law which now coexists with the traditional national contract law regimes. The paper assesses the various types of contract law on the international, supranational and national levels and discusses the problems arising from the fact that the contract law in the European Community is so diverse. Directive 2005/29/EC on Unfair Business-to-Consumer Commercial Practices is discussed as a very prominent recent product of European Community consumer legislation. The paper points out how the development of European consumer law serves as a catalyst for the further development of a genuine European contract law.

‘Fraud’ and ‘Misleading Commercial Practices’: Modernising the Law of Defects in Consent

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Paolo Patti
Keyword(s):  
Law And Economics ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
European Contract ◽  
Consumer Law ◽  
A Value ◽  
The Law ◽  
Civil Codes ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Market Strategies ◽  
European Contract Law

AbstractThe rules provided by the civil codes on defects in consent were designed at a time when the notion of consumer law did not exist and fairness at the pre-contractual stage was not widely considered as a value worthy of protection. Matters have changed radically in the last three decades. The proliferation of rules protecting consumers on a European level, especially through information duties and rights of withdrawal, and the growing impact of general clauses, has led to a fragmentation of domestic contract law. This clash of different sets of rules is particularly conspicuous in the field of unfair commercial practices as the European legislator has not made provision for specific private law remedies for individual consumers in cases of misleading and aggressive commercial practices. This article addresses the particular issue of the applicability of the law of fraudulent misrepresentation to cases of misleading commercial practices. The purpose is to reconsider ‘fraud’ in terms of a defect in consent, in a manner that is both more in line with the modern features of European contract law and better able to counteract new market strategies based on exploiting cognitive weaknesses. The focus is thus put on the relationship between pre-contractual information duties and defective consent, as well as on some insights of law and economics, which demonstrate that ‘consent theories’ or ‘will theories’ cannot provide precise criteria to indicate when a contract should be void. In conclusion, a possible legislative intervention aiming to substitute the rules on fraud for a set of remedies for violation of information duties is discussed.

Comparative Contract Law

2006 ◽  
pp. 898-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Allan Farnsworth
Keyword(s):  
Common Law ◽  
German Law ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Legal Systems ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Contract ◽  
American Law ◽  
The Common ◽  
General Contract Law ◽  
European Contract Law

This article presents an overview of comparative contract law. It reveals a number of differences between civilian legal systems and the common law, and also between French and German law as two main exponents of the civil-law tradition and, to some extent, even between English and US-American law. The same is true of other major issues in the field of general contract law that have not been touched upon. But there is a gradual convergence. This convergence is due to developments in all of the four legal systems covered in this article: English, US-American, French, and German law. And it has enabled scholars from around the world to elaborate an international restatement of contract law (the UNIDROIT Principles of International Commercial Contracts) and scholars from all the member states of the European Union to formulate a restatement of European contract law (the Principles of European Contract Law).

Weaker Party Protection

2021 ◽  
pp. 272-335
Author(s):  
Martijn W. Hesselink
Keyword(s):  
Consumer Protection ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
European Contract ◽  
The Core ◽  
General Rules ◽  
Different Types ◽  
European Contract Law

This Chapter discusses the question of whether contract law can and should differentiate between different types of contracting parties according to their relational or social weakness. Should contract law protect certain weaker parties, through the implementation of measures ranging from general rules against unfair exploitation or abuse of circumstances to more specific sets of rules protecting certain categories of contracting parties, such as workers, tenants, and consumers? And if so, who should count as worthy of protection and what kinds of protection should they be granted? Given that consumer protection has been central to EU contract law, this question goes to the core of the justifiability of the European contract law acquis.

scholarly journals The Continued Resonance and Challenge of the “Ius Commune” in Modern European Contract Law

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-418
Author(s):  
Martin J. Doris
Keyword(s):  
Information Exchange ◽  
Alternative Assessment ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
Research Strategy ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Contract ◽  
Legal Information ◽  
Cross Border ◽  
Ius Commune ◽  
European Contract Law

The need for a more consistent and coherent European contract law is a current priority of the EC institutions. Despite decades of pointillistic legal harmonization, cross border transactions within the Internal market of the European Union continue to take place in the shadow of divergent procedural and substantive law rules, differing legal cultures and significant linguistic diversities. Whilst national contract law systems function more or less efficiently internally, it is their partial non-compatibility with other Member States’ private laws that provokes isolated distortions on the market. As a consequence, the European Commission has presented its ‘Common Frame of Reference’ research strategy aimed at fostering common contract law principles, model rules and uniform legal terminology, which, it is believed, will better facilitate commercial actors. The European Parliament has moved a step further by lending institutional credibility to the case for a European civil code. However, this clamour for codification of private laws – an idea premised on two formalisms, legal and economic – has in many respects overlooked the mechanics of modern commercial contracting in particular, the importance of contract drafting and the complex negotiations that lead to deals both domestically and cross border. This paper therefore provides an alternative assessment of the development of a Europeanius commune,or ‘common law’ of contract, and considers the urgency of improved means of legal information exchange in order to better facilitate the ongoing harmonization effort.

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