Legal Literature

Consumer Rights Directive, link

The article is about the possibility that the regulations of the Consumer Rights Directive are incompatible with fundamental rights.
This is because the Consumer Rights Directive includes a complex set of duties that businesses must fulfil, even in very inconspicuous transactions, and provide for drastic sanctions in cases when a business fails to comply with the whole set. Even minor lapses can cause a business to be turned away empty-handed and without any remuneration whatsoever for services that it has rendered to the consumer. This sanction is imposed even if, for example, the consumer himself had asked for the contract to be concluded off-premises, if high-value services have been provided over a period of several months, and if the quality of the services is outstanding and the price charged is moderate.
The author thinks that this dynamic may drive smaller businesses into insolvency. For her, it seems that the Directive ignores basic principles of proportionality and might even be incompatible with fundamental rights at European as well as national levels.
The author comes to the conclusion that general private law addresses this problem only in exceptional cases.

At the end of this article summaries in English and French are included.