Abstract
It will be argued in this article that the EU Recommendation on common principles for collective redress might have limited impact on the field of competition law due to: several uncertainties regarding the legal standing in class actions; difficulties in their funding; and the risk of forum shopping with cross-border actions. Nevertheless, Belgium and Great Britain have recently introduced class actions into their national legal systems and addressed some of the difficulties which other Member States were experiencing already. It will also be suggested that the Portuguese model – the ‘Popular Action’ – and recent Portuguese practice may be considered an interesting example to follow in order to overcome some of the identified obstacles to private antitrust enforcement.
Highlights
The paper examines the normative concept of the consumer from a broad perspective of market regulation by focussing on unfair commercial practices as this is a horizontal instrument involving a broad range of transactions in various markets and because the Unfair Commercial practices Directive 2005/29 lays down the normative concept of the consumer in its provisions
The specific questions the paper analyzes are: Do the existing normative notions of the ‘average’ consumer and the definition of consumers in EU and national law correspond to public policy discourse on consumers’ active role in regulating markets? How do these laws address the vulnerability of consumers? How do the EU and national law notions conceptually link to each other? And most importantly how do courts and regulatory authorities interpret these notions? The paper finds that while there are clear normative concepts of the consumer in the legislation and EU free movement jurisprudence, their application in other fields of EU consumer law, as well as in national law, demonstrate a more nuanced image of the consumer
With respect to legislation and law enforcement, this analysis will focus on unfair commercial practices as this is a horizontal instrument involving a broad range of transactions in various markets and because the Unfair Commercial practices Directive 2005/29 lays down the normative concept of the consumer in its provisions and on the basis of the normative standard as developed in the ECJ’s jurisprudence on free movement rules4
Summary
T I C Peer-reviewed scientific periodical, focusing on legal and economic issues of antitrust and regulation. Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 Poland License. The Regulatory Consumer in EU and National Law? Case Study of the Normative Concept of the Consumer in Hungary and Poland by Katalin J.
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