Revision of the Consumer-Acquis? Twelve Propositions on the European Commission's Proposal for a Common European Sales Law and the Future of European Contract Law

Abstract

The article critically examines the rules of the Draft Common European Sales Law (DCESL) with a particular focus on the European Commission's original project of revising the acquis communautaire. Such a revision, it is argued, has never happened; it was neither achieved by the academic working groups drafting non-legislative codifications such as the PECL, the Acquis Principles or the DCFR, nor by the European Commission in its various attempts to integrate the acquis. Such revision, however, is still urgently needed; this is shown with a particular focus on the DCESL's scope, information duties, unfair terms-control, and the question of mandatory law. Many rules in the DCESL appear dysfunctional in that they clearly neither help consumers nor businesses; others are drafted in an overall inconsistent way. Instead of persisting on the less helpful categories of 'more' or 'less consumer protection', often the result of political compromise, the project of harmonizing European private law should embrace genuinely legal, technical arguments that will facilitate the formulation of a coherent, rational body of law.

Note: Downloadable document is in German.

Keywords: consumer protection law, European private law, harmonisation, DCESL, DCFR, acquis principles