Content area

Full Text

 
Headnote

ABSTRACT

Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 17 June 2008 on the law applicable to contractual obligations, known as Rome I provides harmonised conflict of laws rules based on widely recognized international private law principles such as freedom of choice with the aim to ensure uniformity within EU and to eliminate uncertainty with regard to the applicable law. The position of the consumers as the weaker party in the contractual relation results with the implementation of various safe-guarding mechanisms in both national and international legislations. In cross-border transactions the position of the consumers is considered even more sensitive and the need for their protection results with numerous special provisions. Such provisions in Rome I are contained in the Article 6 that provides definition of the consumer contract (and also the exemptions) and establishes the rules for determination of the law that should be applied thereon. The main principle is that consumers should be protected by such rules of the country of their habitual residence that cannot be derogated from by agreement. Such solution still enables the parties to choose the governing law for their agreement, but provides the minimum of the protection to the consumers by not depriving them from the protection of their local rules they supposed to be familiar with. The aim of this paper is to analyse whether such solution is well balanced and well harmonized with the other EU instruments adopted with the purpose to ensure protection of the consumers, particularly in the field of the increasingly present on-line commerce.

Keywords: applicable law, consumers, habitual residence, protection.

1.INTRODUCTION

Ever since of the first EU acts, protection of consumers has been defined as one of the goals that should be achieved in order to enable functioning of internal market and free movement of goods and services. Work of European authorities in this respect has been quite productive and today protection of the consumer is one of the most regulated area. Besides the acts that deals exclusively with this subject, protection of the consumers is also included in the provisions of the acts dealing with the general substantive or procedural matters.

One of them is Rome I Regulation that deals with conflict-of-laws issues in contractual...

Show less