Nepravične ugovorne odredbe: međunarodni, evropski i nacionalni nivo regulative i zaštite

Abstract

On the occasion of three decades of implementation of the Council Directive 93/13 EEC on unfair terms in consumer contracts, the paper examines unfair contractual provisions through relevant regulations at the international, European and national level. Analyzing the origin and thirty-year implementation of the European directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts, the paper points out the significant role of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU), as well as the circumstance that its case law were systematized in 2019 in the Guidelines on the interpretation and application of the Directive. Different ways of legal protection against unfair contract terms in European consumer protection law are analyzed. Afterwards, the legal regime of unfair contract terms in domestic law is discussed, i.e. the Law on Obligations and the Law on Consumer Protection. It is shown that the first rules related to unfair provisions (regardless of their term) were essentially created in the context of the law of general business conditions and were elaborated much later in the context of consumer law. Such a conclusion is confirmed not only by a temporal comparison of the emergence of special laws on general business conditions and European directives, but also within domestic law, in which they are regulated by the Law on Obligations significantly before the Law on Consumer Protection. The work of international organizations in the context of international consumer law is researched, especially the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection, adopted under the auspices of UNCTAD.