Thoughts on the EU Digital Single Market Strategy and the New Consumer Sales Directive

Abstract

The paper describes the impact of the EU ‘Digital Single Market Strategy’ (DSMS) on consumer law. The essay analyses, in particular, the new Consumer Sales Directive [Directive (EU) 2019/771] and its recent transposition into Italian Law. Starting from the assumption that the Information-Digital Age certainly has social-economic impacts, therefore also legal ones, the paper first of all illustrates the Strategy promoted in 2015 by the European Commission. In order to represent how the Commission intends to face the new digital “revolution” and its economic opportunities, this essay — through a brief description of the main pillars of the DSMS — tries to circumscribe the outcomes of the Strategy and its correlation with the new legal regime proposed for the building of the so-called ‘Internal Market 2.0’. Moreover, the paper analyses the important role that consumer protection plays in relation to the European Commission’s DSMS. With this in mind, the article examines the main aspects of the so-called ‘New Deal for Consumers’ (NDC), promoted in 2018 by the Commission in order to accompany the implementation of certain parts of the DSMS. In this first part of the article, a sort of “toolbox” is offered to the reader with the purpose of developing a better understanding of the current EU trends in consumer law. Following this line of research, the second part of the article focuses on the Directive (EU) 2019/771 proposed by the European Commission to regulate certain aspects concerning contracts for the sale of goods. In the final section, the paper describes the principal characteristics of the Italian transposition of the New Consumer Sales Directive (NCSD), as implemented in November 2021. In the conclusion, the paper suggests that the most recent EU interventions on consumer law are still based on a traditional understanding of consumer protection and, with regard to certain aspects, do not appear to be very different from the previous legislation (this is the case of the so-called hierarchy of remedies).