Introduction to 'The European Unfair Commercial Practices Directive'

Abstract

In 2005, the EU Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices was adopted. The UCP Directive has the ambitious aim of addressing unfair commercial practices directly related to distorting consumers’ economic behaviour concerning transactional decisions. In this introductory chapter to the edited volume “The European Unfair Commercial Practices Directive - Impact, Enforcement Strategies and National Legal Systems” (Willem van Boom, Amandine Garde & Orkun Akseli (eds.); Ashgate 2014), we first give a brief overview of the main features of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. Secondly, we sketch three themes that seem to have a prominent presence in all discussions of the Directive: the tension between consumer autonomy, empowerment and protection; the problematic nature of the maximum harmonization principle; and finally the decentralized enforcement framework and the challenges this poses at Member State level. Finally, we introduce the contributions to the volume.

Keywords: Unfair commercial practices; unfair advertising; European consumer law

JEL Classification: D18, K19, K20