Collective Enforcement of Consumer Law: Securing Compliance in Europe through Private Group Action and Public Authority Intervention

9789076871806

9076871809

In the 1970s and 1980s, the consumer rights movement in Europe primarily focused on improving consumer rights by way of changing the substantive law. Moreover, from the second half of the 1980s, consumer law increasingly became of interest to the European Union. In the eyes of the European Commission, consumer law was and is instrumental to the establishment and completion of the internal market. As a result of this instrumentalist view of consumer law, the emphasis in European consumer law was often put on correcting information asymmetries by imposing duties to inform on sellers and service providers, often combined with the introduction on cooling off-periods and rights of withdrawal. Since the beginning of the 21st century, a new trend seems to have emerged. Apart from legislation supporting the development of new markets and marketing techniques (e-commerce, distance selling, and distance marketing of financial services), the attention is gradually shifting from improving consumer