The protection offered by European Union consumer law as an area of dialogue between the Court of Justice of the European Union and national courts

Abstract

Consumer protection is not the only area of EU law in which significant progress has been made both through the adoption of formal legal instruments and through the interpretation of existing rules by the Court of Justice of the European Union, mostly on the initiative of national courts through the preliminary reference procedure provided for in Article 267 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. However, EU consumer law is unique in that the Court of Justice, with the assistance of national judges, has developed what can be described as a surprising interpretation of the secondary legislation in this area, going beyond the substantive aspects which it seeks to regulate and touching on important procedural aspects relating to the procedural position of consumers seeking to enforce their rights under European law and the remedies which can be used within the national legal systems of the Member States to promote more effective enforcement of consumer protection law..
 The article begins by highlighting the approach taken by the Court of Justice in this decision and the implications of this approach, and then goes on to highlight two of the main mechanisms used in this approach - the progressive development of a broad concept of consumer in its procedural dimension and the principle of ex officio action by the national judge in consumer cases. The case-law relating to these mechanisms is presented in terms of its dynamics, including the most recent developments and a reading grid is proposed for each of them, which goes beyond the issue of consumer protection in order to identify the implications from an institutional perspective of the relationship between the European Union and the Member States. The final part of the paper brings the two sets of jurisprudence together in order to draw some conclusions on the growing role of European jurisprudence.