One Year of Consumer Access to Payment Accounts – a New Dimension of European Anti-Discrimination Law?

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyses a consumer rights approach to protection against discrimination in EU law that has been established with the adoption of the so-called Payment Accounts Directive 2014/92/EU of 23 July 2014 (PAD). The approach has potential to sustainably transform the legal coexistence of, on the one side, EU consumer law and, on the other side, EU anti-discrimination law. In form of a so far unprecedented regulation, it directly links the non-discrimination principle of Article 21 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights with consumer protection. At the same time, the approach ties in with traditional concepts in consumer law relating to vulnerable consumers and to services of general economic interest. Following the year which has passed since the transposition deadline of 18 September 2016, this article argues that the PAD constitutes a first step towards a consumer-specific anti-discrimination protection of its own kind, the key features of which it seeks to outline.