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(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(2), 647-663 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. – II. Consumer law enforcement through computational investigations. – II.1. The CPC Regulation. – II.2. DSA. – III. Computational Measurements of Influencer Activity: a case study for digital enforcement. – IV. Consumer forensics: a new field for digital detectives. – IV.1. Consolidating data collection and analysis methods for consumer law. – IV.2. Classifying new forms of consumer harms. – IV.3. Developing new approaches to consumer protection. – IV.4. Exploring the legal and ethical implications of consumer forensics. – V. Conclusion. | (Abstract) Effective enforcement on digital markets is one of the most essential considerations for contemporary consumer law and policy. On digital markets, traders engage in very sophisticated commercial practices that are opaque to the average consumer. Online information is necessary for the monitoring of how companies engage in legal compliance, and where public authorities should intervene. This puts a lot of pressure on public administration to develop investigation and enforcement approaches that match the different consumer harms and needs arising out of digital markets. As it is virtually impossible to police technology practices without understanding the technologies and business models behind them, public authorities need to arm themselves with the means necessary to detect digital violations. This Article focuses on the digital enforcement of consumer protection law in the European Union and proposes a new field of research focused on the investigation and enforcement of consumer violations on digital markets in the form of “consumer forensics”. In the author’s opinion, consumer forensics is the answer to the question of how consumer enforcement regulation can become future-proof. As digitalization is rapidly affecting the way in which consumers are protected on the Internet, both the substantive and procedural dimensions of regulatory effectiveness will be impacted by evidence gathering to understand and further prove the existence of new online harms. To show the potential of this topic, the Article will offer some in-depth insights from a very specific topic of administrative scrutiny, namely measuring influencer marketing activities that are relevant for consumer protection.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(2), 631-646 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. – II. Personalised marketing and its potential to exploit consumer vulnerabilities. – II.1. Personalised marketing. – II.2. Potential to exploit consumer vulnerabilities. – III. Consumer protection against personalised marketing: shortcomings of the current EU legal framework. – III.1. The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. – III.2. Three main obstacles in effectively protecting consumers. – IV. Recent legislative changes and proposals: only a partial solution. – IV.1. Introduction. – IV.2. Modernisation Directive. – IV.3. Digital Services Act. – IV.4. Artificial Intelligence Act. – IV.5. Conclusion. – V. Research and policy agenda: towards future-proof marketing law. – V.1. An overall redesign of EU marketing law. – V.2. Research and policy agenda. – VI. Conclusion. | (Abstract) While companies used to advertise primarily via mass media, marketing (in particular online) is becoming increasingly personalised. Personalised marketing offers benefits to consumers, but can also exploit their vulnerabilities. For example, personalised marketing enables companies to specifically target psychological weaknesses in consumers. This threatens their autonomy and increases the power asymmetry between companies and consumers. EU marketing law, and in particular the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, aims at protecting consumers against economic harm by reducing power asymmetries between companies and consumers. This Article will discuss to what extent EU marketing law is future-proof in terms of its fitness to effectively protect consumers against personalised marketing techniques. It will be argued that the law is currently unfit to effectively protect consumers, and that recent legislative changes and proposals only address this problem to a limited extent. It is argued that a “quick fix” to make EU marketing law future-proof is not available, and that an overall redesign of EU marketing law is necessary to protect consumers against the personalised marketing techniques of today and tomorrow.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2023 8(1), 221-226 | Article | (Abstract) This explanation presents the Special Section “The horizontal clauses of arts 8-13 TFEU: normative implications, implementation and potential for mainstreaming”, which collects six Articles originally presented at a workshop devoted to the integration clauses of the TFEU held in October 2021. With a view to working towards a better understanding of arts 8-13 TFEU and their contribution to gender equality, non-discrimination, social protection, environmental protection, consumer protection and animal welfare, the six Articles reflect on the legal nature, value and effects of relevant provisions on EU law- and policy-making. Setting the scene, the explanation outlines the main research questions that guide the analysis in the six Articles and explains how each contribution feeds into the Special Section.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2022 7(3), 1431-1446 | Article | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. The development of European consumer protection policy. - III. The limits of art. 12 TFEU. - IV. Coordination between consumer and environmental policy: a new avenue to activate art. 12 TFEU? - IV.1. The 2020 Consumer agenda. - V. Conclusion. | (Abstract) The integration clause contained in art. 12 TFEU has been rarely invoked in European policymaking. This is due to the generic language adopted by the EU legislator, who does not impose an obligation on the EU bodies to integrate consumer protection in other Union policies or on Member States, thus reducing the justiciability of the provision. Compared to other TFEU provisions dedicated to consumer protection, the strength of art. 12 TFEU seems extremely low. However, art. 12 TFEU may come in handy in the development of a more sustainable economy in which the interests of consumers are not only focused on strengthening the internal market but also on safeguarding the environment and reducing industrial waste. This Article evaluates whether and how art. 12 TFEU may impact the choices of European bodies on the circular economy, the European Green Deal and the re-cent Consumer Agenda strengthening the role of consumers in the green transition.

(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2022 7(3), 1113-1119 | European Forum Highlight of 31 January 2023 | (Abstract) This Highlight provides an overview of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) from the perspective of consumer protection. The DMA constitutes a part of a long-anticipated digital package of cross-cutting legislation proposed by the European Commission in 2020. The DMA entered into force in 2022 with the objective of ensuring a safe, fair, and contestable digital market. Besides the influx of legislative acts in digital law, the year 2022 was also marked by the 50th anniversary of EU consumer protection. The author takes advantage of this moment to reflect on how the DMA fits in the broader regulatory context of consumer protection and investigate what improvements the DMA brings for consumers. The main problem with the Regulation lies in the ambiguity of its goals, and its approach to the notion of "fairness" in particular. On the one hand, the DMA improves consumer rights through multiple provisions which contribute to increasing interoperability in the market, ensuring easy uninstallation, subscription cancellation, data portability and data transfer, as well as eliminating unfair market practices such as self-preferencing, tying, and tracking users without their proper consent. On the other hand, the DMA treats consumers merely as passive end users in the digital market and it does not engage them fully in the introduced institutional and procedural proceedings. The DMA also misses the opportunity to provide the long-anticipated updated definition of "consumer", which could lead to a recalibration of the EU consumer protection law, and it does not exploit fully the potential of consumer protection.

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(Series Information) European Papers - A Journal on Law and Integration, 2019 4(3), 763-777 | Insight | (Table of Contents) I. Introduction. - II. The CJEU recourse to international law in decisions on disputed territories. - III. Court's analysis in Psagot: mandatory indication of the country of origin or the place of provenance of foodstuffs. - III.1. "Country of origin" v. "place of provenance". - III.2. Misleading consumers regarding the products' territory of origin and place of provenance. - III.3. Consumer protection and mandatory nature of origin marks. - IV. Observance of international law as a ground for mandatory origin marking. - V. Conclusion. | (Abstract) Mandatory origin labelling of products from occupied territories has been a delicate matter in the EU external trade policy. In the recent judgement Psagot (judgment of 12 November 2019, case C-363/18, Organisation juive européenne and Vignoble Psagot [GC]), the Court of Justice considered consumers' ethical considerations related to violations of international law as a reason for mandatory origin labelling of products originating in the Israeli settlements. This Insight argues that, in its decision, the Court missed a number of opportunities to clarify some essential concepts of EU food law, consumer protection and customs law and, as such, provided a ruling that is based on flawed and unconvincing argumentation. The Court's broad interpretation of the notion "ethical considerations" under Regulation 1169/2011 opens a Pandora's box of trade-restrictive practices while at the same time, continues the EU inconsistent policy towards trade with occupied territories.

This study invites not to reduce food as either an object of consumption or an industrial commodity: in order to bridge this gap, it moves away from the classical theory of commodification or from any kind of network theory, drawing on the idea of food quality as a new cultural practice. Following the practice turn in contemporary social science, especially in the case of consumption theory, the paper goes on analyzing some culinary practices of a bunch of cooks working in a North Italian urban area, drawing critically on the concept of «new cultural intermediaries», in order to explain the empirical process of social empowerment which make those subject more and more able to fix a specific definition of «quality food». Using the empirical material taken from a broader research work and focusing mainly on in-depth interviews to those mundane chefs, this study intend to present the sort of symbolic governance they could play in the cultural process of food qualification when, as it happens in our empirical case, it is equalize or sometimes reduce to territorial features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an attempt to explore the fundamental assumptions that might be said to underlie modern consumerism. The starting point for this investigation is the assumption that the latter is characterised by an emphasis on feeling and emotion and by a practice and ideology that is markedly individualistic. The connection between this system of consumption and metaphysical premises is then first explored through an examination of the relationship between the activity of consumption and the notion of identity before going on to consider its role in the provision of ontological reassurance. At the same time the existence of a distinctive consumerist epistemology is also noted, together with a tendency to endorse a belief in 'magic'. Finally these features are shown to be consonant with a widespread and explicit philosophy present in contemporary society, that espoused by representatives of the New Age movement, a parallelism that seems to justify the contention that the modern West really is a 'consumer civilization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a conceptual framework for understanding the development of the cultural constraints that the society puts on consumption phenomena. The author considers first the ideological criticism which had characterized the sociological thought, focusing on the exponents of the School of Frankfurt. Issues such as false need, alienation, standardization of culture and manipulation by the capitalistic system come under review. Other social constraints are then identified in the growth of consumer protection associations (consumerism) and no global pressure groups. Implications on the social role of brands and the ethical dimensions of consumption are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims to explore the cognate dimensions, related to the different paradigms regarding the concept of food safety. This emerges from the analysis of public European policies involving consumer protection. The subjects of this study are the social representations of the concept of "food safety", analyzed through the mythology of word associations analyzed by experts. The research proves that different cognitive representations (social and cultural) of the concepts of health protection correspond too many different ways of understanding consumer protection. The analysis offers a complex image of the interests at stake and defines the different strategies for evolution and interpretation of consumer's needs by the system of analysis that operates in the areas of consumer protection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]