European Consumer Law: A Law for the Consumer or the Internal Market? The case of the Consumer Rights Directive and its application to the UK and Cypriot regime

In 2008 the European Commission has put forward a Proposal for a Consumer Rights Directive with the aim to increase consumer confidence in the internal market. Based on the principle of maximum harmonisation, the proposed Directive provided for amendments in the areas of unfair contract terms, consumer remedies, distance and doorstep selling. However, the disagreement of Member States regarding the contentious amendments to unfair contract terms and consumer remedies which involved a reduction of consumer protection led to those changes being dropped from the final Directive. The shift to maximum harmonisation and the contentious amendments in the two areas constitute the starting point for the argument put forward in this thesis. Increasing consumer confidence has not been the actual aim behind the Commission’s legislative efforts.
With the application of the moral panic theory to the case of European Consumer Law, the aim is to show how the European Commission has used the consumer confidence justification as a smokescreen for the shift to maximum harmonisation which can better support its internal market project. The Consumer Rights Directive as adopted constitutes a compromise and only amends Distance Selling and Doorstep Selling Directives. Although reduction to the level of consumer protection was prevented, the eventual approach followed under the Consumer Rights Directive still constitutes indication of the fact that the driving force has been the internal market. The application of the Directive to the domestic regimes of UK and Cyprus provides an opportunity to test the main argument of this thesis.