International Protection of Consumers as a Global or a Regional Policy

Abstract

This article argues that the international protection of consumers should be a global policy in the twenty-first century, since consumers are important actor of the globalization. But beside the UN Guidelines on Consumer Protection (UNGCP) from 1985, revised in 1999 and 2015, there is no other universal – or “global” – legal instrument (either soft or hard law) on consumer protection. In opposite to environmental law, there is no single global convention or binding international legal instrument on consumer protection issues. The article analyses the role of South America with regard to the promotion of international consumer law and two efforts of the Brazilian Government to enhance the international protection of consumers, in Mercosur and at the Hague Conference on Private International Law, and the chances of their success as a future hard or soft law. The main problem discussed in this article is whether the current international protection of consumers is a global policy or a mere regional or national policy, which contributes for a fragmented picture of the consumer protection worldwide.