Benöhr, Iris; Micklitz, Hans-W. --- "Consumer Protection and Human Rights" [2010] ELECD 167; in Howells, Geraint; Ramsay, Iain; Wihelmsson, Thomas; Kraft, David (eds), "Handbook of Research on International Consumer Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2010)

Book Title: Handbook of Research on International Consumer Law

Editor(s): Howells, Geraint; Ramsay, Iain; Wihelmsson, Thomas; Kraft, David

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201287

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Consumer Protection and Human Rights

Author(s): Benöhr, Iris; Micklitz, Hans-W.

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

2. Consumer protection and human rights
Iris Benöhr and Hans-W. Micklitz*



1. Introduction
There is a strong link between consumer protection and human rights, which
has been increasingly recognized in international legislation during the last
years. Consumer law appeared in the 1970s in response to problems engen-
dered by mass production and market failures. Although broader markets
improve competition by favouring consumer choice, they limit national states'
protective role for consumer welfare from unaccountable transactional
arrangements. Growing cross-border exchanges increase complexity, leading
to abusive market behaviour and new health risks for consumers because of
aggressive advertising and limited access to information and justice. To coun-
terbalance this globalization trend there have been continuous attempts to
create global ethical values through new human rights.1 First declared at the
international level in the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection,
consumer rights are increasingly included in modern national constitutions as
third generations of welfare state rights. Consumer protection has also been
recently inserted at European level as a modern human rights principle in
Article 38 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union.
Although it has been generally recognized that a minimum standard of
international consumer rights must be upheld, there is no clear consensus on
the practical importance of a formal declaration of such rights. To many, the
acknowledgement of these rights is more rhetorical than real, amounting
simply to a formal acceptance of the legal instruments already in place. In the
light of these criticisms, ...