A New Legal Design for the Credit Reporting Industry

Under the traditional and well-established conception, credit bureaus are understood as being little more than vessels storing customer data that has been furnished by specific suppliers, such as banks, intermediaries and, more generally, lenders. Accordingly, credit bureaus are deemed to play a ‘neutral’ role in the credit market. Hence, in Europe and the US, they are generally not responsible for any inaccuracies in the information they put into circulation, despite data quality being crucial for the proper functioning of the market and for a fair allocation of resources. This circumstance engenders, however, a conflict between the market interest in accurate data and the ‘endogenous’ for-profit interest of credit bureaus. More specifically, despite their performing an important activity in an oligopolistic environment, credit bureaus are presently allowed to pursue their for-profit interest without any substantial accountability as regards their ‘exogenous’ function of transmitting accurate data. This disequilibrium oftentimes results in under-performance and a low level of data quality. The analysis points out, also through a comparative analysis with the rules governing the US credit report system, how these circumstances in the credit market sector can imperil some pivotal objectives of the EU legal policy, which aims at ensuring equal levels of protection among citizens of Member States within a unique environment dependent on the cross-border exchange of information.

Reflections on the ‘Just Price’ in Times of Crisis (with Reference to Coronavirus … but not only)

The debate about the ‘just price’ has ancient origin and returns forcefully to the scene when, in the event of crises of various kinds, there is a rapid and significant increase in prices of given goods or services. The main issue is whether price increases of such a nature could, or should, be considered illicit and ground the issue of sanctions against the firms increasing prices, thus focusing on a macro-systemic level of analysis. The central part of the article reviews different theories on what a ‘just price’ should be and focuses on the idea that a price is ‘just’ when it functions as an index of relative scarcity in free markets. It is claimed that such a function deserves protection by Italian and EU law. Therefore price adjustments in response to shocks cannot and should not be considered illegal: it is unacceptable to sanction private firms by attributing them the wrong of not having substituted themselves, at their own expense, for the exercise of a public function (that of making sure that price increases do not put at risk solidarity and other constitutional principles).

European Union Litigation

This article provides an overview of cases decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning contract law. The present issue covers the period between the beginning of January 2021 and the end of May 2021.