A Cross-Border-Only Regulation for Consumer Transactions in the EU

For more than 25 years, the European Union (EU) and its legal predecessor, the European Community, have adopted legislation directly aimed at improving the position of consumer who wish to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the internal market. This legislation generally deals with selected issues only, such as the provision of pre-contractual information or a right of withdrawal from a contract where the circumstances in which it was made (at a distance or at the consumer’s home) or the nature of the transaction so justifies. There are some measures of more general application, such as the regulation of unfair contract terms or the sale of goods to consumers. The particular type of measure used by the EU has been the Directive. A directive does not apply directly, but needs to be transposed into the national laws of each of the 27 EU Member States, i.e., each Member State has to adopt legislation, or amend existing legislation, to give effect to the requirements of a particular directive. This process is commonly referred to as “harmonisation”, although the terminology used in the EU Treaties is that of “approximation”. What this means is that the EU has tried to introduce a common set of consumer protection rules by requiring each national law to be adjusted, rather than by adopting legislation which would apply directly without the need of further action by the Member States. As the directives adopted to date only deal with specific aspects of consumer protection, there is considerable interaction between national provisions giving effect to EU directives and related areas of domestic law; indeed, it is often the case that domestic rules had to be adopted to supplement particular rules required by a directive.