“Embedded Consumer”: Towards a Constitutional Reframing of the Legal Image of Consumers in EU law

Consumer protection is an integral part of the current phase of the European integration project. However, eclipsed by market-building, the image of European consumers is homogeneously defined by individual economic interests against a uniform metric. This article proposes the alternative image of an “embedded consumer” to align with the imaginary of the constitutional person under primary EU law, especially the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. Under the Charter, a constitutional person is fundamentally shaped and significantly enabled by their communities and thus bears “duties and responsibilities” towards the community. This obligation does not always amount to individual legal responsibility as individuals are inevitably vulnerable (when social structures lack fairness) and rely on social institutions to build up their resilience. Accordingly, the embedded consumer is also socially responsible and humanly vulnerable. This entails that a responsible consumer policy should move beyond individual responsibilisation and involve public obligations and corporate responsibilities to create a conducive framework for sustainable and responsible consumption. A responsible framework is a balanced one, on the one hand, which consciously navigates the conflicts between the various rights of the consumer as a person and between the consumer’s rights and the community’s interests. On the other hand, it also takes consumer vulnerability as the starting point for consumer policy. Such an “embedded consumer” is not merely futuristic but represents a transformation underway in the EU. EU consumer law and policy should be informed by the embedded consumer and the collective vision it reflects.