International Consumer Law: What Is It All About?

Abstract

Increasing effort has been invested in the internationalization of consumer law. Some of the recent huge global consumer law–related scandals (e.g., Dieselgate, Facebook) demonstrate the rising relevance of and the need for international consumer law. This paper argues that the efforts towards the internationalization of consumer law should focus, first, on the establishment of globally accepted minimum standards of consumer protection (as it has been done through the United Nations Guidelines on Consumer Protection) and, second, on the development and facilitation of cooperation as a necessary prerequisite for the efficient protection of consumers (as it has been initiated by the International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network), rather than on the harmonization of substantive consumer law. This is not only because coordination among diverse countries in the area of consumer protection is easier to achieve in practice through a policy approach rather than substantive harmonization, but also because coordination in practice is an instrument that, as it stands now, is capable of providing a higher level of protection to consumers than substantive harmonization.