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Cafaggi, Fabrizio; Nicita, Antonio --- "The Evolution of Consumer Protection in the EU" [2012] ELECD 676; in Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd (eds), "Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2012)

Book Title: Research Handbook on the Economics of European Union Law

Editor(s): Eger, Thomas; Schäfer, Hans-Bernd

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781849801003

Section: Chapter 11

Section Title: The Evolution of Consumer Protection in the EU

Author(s): Cafaggi, Fabrizio; Nicita, Antonio

Number of pages: 14

Extract:

11 The evolution of consumer protection in the EU
Fabrizio Cafaggi and Antonio Nicita*


1 INTRODUCTION

Consumer protection law in Europe is not a clear or unique set of rules.1 Rather, it refers
to a broad range of areas which focus on specific purposes covered by different legisla-
tions and regulations, such as unfair and deceptive advertising, outright fraud, consumer
credit, warranty transactions, as well as consumers' switching costs in network industries
and so on. This wider production of rules is further complicated by the circumstance
that European regulations have proceeded parallel to uncoordinated initiatives by
national governments and parliaments. Today, a comprehensive multi-level approach to
consumer law is still missing and the protection of consumers' interests is fragmentated
into many sectoral regulations, which nonetheless increasingly recur, in their regulatory
design, to enforcement devices borrowed from other areas, such as contract law.2
The evolution of the European approach to consumer protection could be fixed by two
milestone dates in 1975 and 1992.3 In 1975, the Council of the European Union issued
a preliminary program for a consumer protection and information policy, by outlin-
ing five basic areas of consumer rights: (a) the right to protection of health and safety;
(b) the right to protection of economic interests; (c) the right to redress; (d) the right to
information and education; and (e) the right of representation (the right to be heard).4 In
1992, the Maastricht Treaty, amending the Treaty establishing the European Economic
Community with a ...