Shaping the Future of European Consumer Protection: Towards a Digital Fairness Act?

Background

In October 2024 the European Commission published the Digital Fairness Fitness Check, evaluating the effectiveness of key directives forming the core of EU consumer law: Unfair Commercial Practices, Consumer Rights, and Unfair Contract Terms. The evaluation focused on whether these Directives provide adequate protection for consumers in the digital environment.

The Fitness Check highlights that while these directives provide a baseline for consumer protection in digital markets, their overall effectiveness is limited. Several problematic practices are not adequately addressed under the current framework, raising the need for new legislative measures. A potential Digital Fairness Act is expected to fill these gaps, though the Fitness Check Report refrains from offering specific policy recommendations.

Summary and Key Findings

In this issue paper, CERRE Research Fellows Christoph Busch and Amelia Fletcher explore the potential contours of a Digital Fairness Act, structuring their analysis around the key areas for improvement identified by the Commission:

• Tackling the most harmful practices
• Reducing legal uncertainty and regulatory fragmentation
• Ensuring consistent application of EU laws
• Enhancing enforcement and compliance mechanisms
• Simplifying rules without compromising consumer protection

For the Digital Fairness Act to fully realise the potential outlined in the Fitness Check, significant work remains to address a range of unresolved issues. Rather than offering immediate policy recommendations, this issue paper identifies key overarching questions that will require further discussion during the development of this new legislation and should shape the upcoming policy debate. The Fitness Check Report serves as a starting point for a broader conversation about the future framework of European consumer protection law. Fletcher and Busch underscore that the ultimate goal is to balance several critical objectives: ensuring robust consumer protection in the digital age, enabling effective enforcement, reducing fragmentation, fostering competitiveness and growth, and avoiding over-regulation. This paper aims to promote discussion on the overarching policy questions and challenges ahead as we progress towards a Digital Fairness Act.

This paper builds on CERRE’s earlier research on Harmful Online Choice Architecture by the same authors. Explore CERRE’s previous publication here.