Administrative and Judicial Enforcement in Consumer Protection: The Way Forward

Abstract

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Consumer Policy in 28 EU Member States: An Empirical Assessment in Four Dimensions

“…Although these directives have narrowed the Member States' available options for setting their own consumer policy, they still leave some possibilities for the Member States to go further in their national level of consumer protection. Consequently and notwithstanding the efforts of the European Commission to align consumer protection in the Member States, current research has shown that national consumer policy approaches still differ (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Repo and Timonen 2017;Wind 2016).…”

“…Comparative studies of consumer policy in Europe have used a regime approach in seeking to identify similarities and differences of consumer policy models between groups of countries (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Cseres 2005;Micklitz 2003;Repo and Timonen 2017;Trumbull 2006a, b). Despite different research interests and scientific perspectives, all of these studies found consumer policy regimes, such as a Scandinavian regime consisting of Denmark, Finland, and Sweden or an East European regime consisting of all East European Member States.…”

“…Considering the efforts of the European Commission to align consumer policy throughout the Union, such findings are notable. However, given that the enforcement of consumer rights is still a national task (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009) or that collective actors have different interests in consumer policy-making (Trumbull 2006a), these findings are not surprising. Instead, what is surprising is that to distinguish and explain consumer policy models, previous studies selected only a few dimensions and factors, such as enforcement regimes (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009), legal traditions (Micklitz 2003), or consumer policy-making (Trumbull 2006a, b).…”

“…However, given that the enforcement of consumer rights is still a national task (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009) or that collective actors have different interests in consumer policy-making (Trumbull 2006a), these findings are not surprising. Instead, what is surprising is that to distinguish and explain consumer policy models, previous studies selected only a few dimensions and factors, such as enforcement regimes (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009), legal traditions (Micklitz 2003), or consumer policy-making (Trumbull 2006a, b). They mainly used literature reviews (Repo and Timonen 2017) or case studies of selected countries (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Cseres 2005;Trumbull 2006a, b) for their analyses and conclusions.…”

“…Instead, what is surprising is that to distinguish and explain consumer policy models, previous studies selected only a few dimensions and factors, such as enforcement regimes (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009), legal traditions (Micklitz 2003), or consumer policy-making (Trumbull 2006a, b). They mainly used literature reviews (Repo and Timonen 2017) or case studies of selected countries (Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Cseres 2005;Trumbull 2006a, b) for their analyses and conclusions. Finally, the effect of European Consumer Policy Directives and their specific application by Member States has not yet been considered to account for the different levels of consumer protection in European Member States.…”