The Consumer Rights Act 2015 – a bastion of European consumer rights?

Abstract

The Consumer Rights Act 2015 seeks to consolidate in one place key consumer rights covering contracts for goods, services and digital content, and the law relating to unfair terms in consumer contracts. These are areas where there has been considerable activity at both a national and an EU level. In particular, the Consumer Sales Directive 99/44/EC, the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Directive 93/13/EEC and the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU have all made significant changes to Member State law, promoting the idea of the ‘informed consumer’, able to assert his or her rights in entering consumer contracts. This paper will examine the extent to which the Act promotes the objectives of these Directives and the implications of the result of the June 2016 referendum that the UK should leave the EU. Does the Consumer Rights Act 2015 represent a valuable consolidation of EU and UK consumer policy, or are EU rights being absorbed into a distinctive national framework of consumer rights?