URL: Latest posts
EU patients' rights
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Last week, on account of the European Patients' Rights Day, the European Commission listed 10 benefits that the European Union brings to patients. EU patients have a right: 1. to receive healthcare when visiting another EU country; 2. to be reimb...
Keeping European consumers safe
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European Commission published an annual RAPEX report for 2012 "Keeping European consumers safe" (on the operation of the Rapid Alert System for non-food dangerous products). The comparison of the report with the one from 2011 shows an incre...
Chartering European consumer law
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The European Commission recently published its annual report on the application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in 2012. The report contains a considerable number of references to consumer protection, notably on the topics of digital content...
What the internet is doing to our brains
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Those of you interested in consumer behaviour, more specifically in regard to digital consumer contracts, might also be interested in watching this short film about the internet's effects on behaviour and learning processes:...
To withdraw or not to withdraw?
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My colleague, and the founder of this blog, Joasia Luzak recently wrote an insightful paper on the pros and cons of giving consumers a right to withdraw from distance contracts: To withdraw or not to withdraw? Evaluation of the mandatory right of wit...
Interim injunctions to stop EMA from releasing non-clinical and clinical data
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As we mentioned last month the Court of Justice was asked by two major pharmaceutical companies AbbVie (case T-44/13, T-29/13) and InterMune (T-73/13) to issue injunctions against the European Medicines Agency (EMA) to stop EMA from releasing certain...
Flight tickets' price transparency
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The European Consumer Organisation, BEUC, sent two letters this April regarding price transparency of airline tickets to Association of European Airlines and European Low Fares Airline Association. The letters are based on the UK Office of Fair Tradi...
Lack of EU collective redress weakens position of defective breast implants' victims
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EU consumer organisation BEUC issued a press release on the 17th of April lamenting the constant lack of a possibility to claim consumer collective redress in Europe (Victims of breast implants scandal flight for compensation - need for EU to better...
Will the TV strike back?
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EU citizens spend more and more time online, pulling out their smartphones on a bus stop to check the for the best connections, downloading TV series on their computers and watching various episodes at leisure and not according to the TV schedule, po...
European Commission on the trail
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For anyone interested in the field of competition law, there are two new updates on antitrust proceedings started by the European Commission outcomes of which may directly influence EU consumers. On the one hand, the EU asked for explanations and...
Does fake equal bad? European Commission thinks so.
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Last year we posted about the EU Customs trying to protect consumers from counterfeit goods by strengthening the examination of products entering the EU market etc. (EU helps to keep it real) Now the European Commission published another memo (Too go...
Passenger rights, a different angle
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How much do we care about governments knowing when, where to, and possibly with whom we travel? Many of us today are used to giving away a lot of information concerning their private lives on social networks, but what if it were possible to get part...
New rules on mortgages?
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Yesterday, the Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee MEPs and EU member state representatives reached a preliminary deal concerning new harmonised rules on mortgages, mainly aiming to increase the sustainability of the credit market. From what ca...
Non-financial accounting of European companies
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What do we know about the companies that trade and produce in Europe? Information on companies' financial performance is (in principle) public, but it is not what investors and- what concerns us more directly- communities and other stakeholders might...
Where the green products are
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The European Commission announced today a draft Communication on Building the Single Market for Green Products and a draft Recommendation on the use of common methods to measure and communicate the life cycle environmental performance of products and...
Opposing unnecessary bank fees
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Last fall the European Parliament called for further harmonisation of cross-border payments, especially with regards to increasing transparency of bank fees and removing the unnecessary ones (see: European fees for card payments?). The European Commi...
National data authorities to closely investigate Google's privacy policy
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At the initiative of the French CNIL, on 2 April six national data protection authorities have launched an investigation into the compatibility of Google's privacy policy with their countries' provisions implementing the European Data Protection Dire...
Unfair commercial practices in practice
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Last month, we reported on the European Commission taking action to improve the enforcement of the Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices. A recent edition of Euronews presents some examples that illustrate the manner in which such practices, in pa...
Legal-economic reflections on CESL
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The European Commission's proposal for a Regulation on an optional Common European Sales Law is slowly but steadily making its way through the legislative process. At this time, it is being discussed in different committees of the European Parliament...
Mandatory statutory or regulatory rules on what? (RWE Vertrieb AG v Verbraucherzentrale Nordrhein-Westfalen e.V.,)
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Yesterday, the Court of Justice delivered an important and complex judgement on (unfair) general terms and conditions in a very special sector, namely that of gas supply. The post which this decision originated is *very* long, so for less advent...
