Journal of Consumer Policy - Call for Papers: Special Issue on EU Consumer Law, Privatization, and Digital Policy Legislation
The gradual dissolution of EU consumer law through fragmentation and privatization in the digital policy legislation
Special Issue Editors: Natali Helberger, Hans-W. Micklitz, Christian Twigg-Flesner
Summary: The overall hypothesis which we would like to debate broadly through this special issue is that EU Consumer Law is being gradually dissolved or superseded by the EU’s digital policy legislation – the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the Digital Market Act (DMA), the Digital Services Act (DSA), the Data Act (DA) and the Artificial Intelligence Act (AIA). The huge impact of the GDPR is visible not only in the academic discourse and the invention of “Consumer Data Protection Law”, but also through the fast-growing case law of the European Court of Justice affecting business-to-consumer (B2C) relations. Many, if not most, of these cases concern the digitalisation of the economy and society. The DMA, the DSA, the DA and the AIA have not yet come to be considered by the European Court of Justice (CJEU), but it will likely only be a matter of a couple of years before the CJEU will start to rule on matters within their scope.
The purpose of the special issue is to go beyond fragmentation and privatization by initiating a debate about the substance of future EU Consumer Law, whether it is fit for the digital economy and whether and which changes have to be made, perhaps through a new “Digital Fairness Act” which addresses all potential questions and clarifies the commonalities and differences between the industrial consumer world and industrial consumer law, and the digital consumer world and digital consumer law.
See the full Call for Papers here (this opens in a new tab).
We are inviting authors to submit original papers to the Journal of Consumer Policy (this opens in a new tab) which engage with the developments sketched out above. It is crucial that papers are especially written in response to the call and fully engage with the topic. We will not consider papers which merely offer a general account of (aspects of) EU Digital Law, nor would be consider papers which are largely based on previously published work. The deadline for submission is 30 September 2024. Please read our Submission Guidelines (this opens in a new tab) carefully before submitting your manuscript. The journal’s style sheet can be downloaded from this page under “Instructions for Authors>Manuscript Submissions>Style Sheet”. Your paper must be formatted in accordance with our house-style before production can commence – you may await the outcome of the peer review process before setting your manuscript into our house style. Note the special instructions for “Law References” in the style sheet document.