From the Kennedy Message to Full Harmonising Consumer Law Directives: A Retrospect

Abstract

This contribution looks to the past of consumer law. There are two reasons for doing so: the personal one is that this author accompanied Hans Micklitz during the first years of his career in Hamburg, Bremen and Berlin, when we established in 1986, together with Udo Reifner, the law journal Verbraucher und Recht, and the academic one is that an answer to the question in which direction a development might go is easier to be found when you know where it comes from. So this contribution draws an arc between the US consumer policy of the Kennedy era and its spread over to Western Europe—that is to say to the states of Western Europe, not to the then EEC—and the completion of the first generation of consumer (contract) Directives with the Sales of Consumer Goods Directive in 1999 and to the full harmonisation approach of the second generation of Directives. At the beginning, Member States were active, whereas the EEC only adopted programmes which were not implemented; at the end of this period, the question is what will be the next steps after targeted full harmonisation. In retrospect it becomes clear that the relation between national and European influence in consumer law cannot be fixed to a certain stage but is subject of a process of continuing changes. Hans Micklitz is, as the author of this contribution, a contemporary witness of the decades described herein, and he contributed substantially not only to academic discussions, but also to the process of political decision-making. Younger readers may find access to the historical background of today’s consumer law.