Abstract
By the introduction of Directive 2011/83/EU the European Union is trying to achieve full harmonization of consumer law in the Member States. It is hoped that this will boost cross-border online sales, which constitute a very low percentage of all consumer transactions at the moment. In this paper the author points out some language issues that may hinder the harmonization process, and tries to find and briefly characterize solutions that would prevent the negative effect of language divergence in EU Member States.
Highlights
On 25 October 2011, after 3 years of negotiations, the European Parliament and the EU Council published a new directive on consumer rights[1] that must be implemented into Member States’ legal systems by 13 June 2014
The main objective is to strengthen the internal market by boosting internal demand that could emerge as a result of cross-border transactions
If the practice of including document-specific definitions in directives, databases, and dictionaries is continued as the only means of achieving common understanding, the process of developing this common understanding may be very slow, if not impossible to achieve
Summary
On 25 October 2011, after 3 years of negotiations, the European Parliament and the EU Council published a new directive on consumer rights[1] that must be implemented into Member States’ legal systems by 13 June 2014. According to the Directive’s preamble[4], the new rules will result in enhanced trust of customers and encourage entrepreneurs to complete more cross-border sales. This way the European lawmakers want to achieve several goals. The aim is to enhance competition within the internal market that could allow the achievement of greater economic efficiency (allocative efficiency) It should help European market champions (capable of competing with large companies from other parts of the world5) to emerge. Language may cause problems at the level of transactions themselves, and secondly the implementation of Directive 2011/83/EU raises concerns over the convergence of legal languages in the EU These two potential sources of difficulties will be examined of this paper. Analytical report (Brussels 2011) 5. 7 It is worth mentioning that this number is gradually rising each year. 8 See Slot (n 5)
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