Information Duties and Consumer Protection

Jorge Gabriel Trindade Marinho

Keywords

Information duties; Consumer; Consumer Protection.

Abstract

In the current society people act daily as consumers in multiple life situations, which led the legislator to guarantee their protection through pre-contractual information duties. Information is a pillar of the European consumer law and it has become the consumer's guardian. Its purpose is to rebalance their contractual position regarding the suppliers and reallocate consumer’s place in the market. The consumer finds themself surrounded by giants: around him emerge an infinity of products and services, offers and proposals, ways of contracting, countless suppliers..., but also the pre-contractual information duties themselves, which appear organized in extensive lists. For this reason, this paradigm reveals weaknesses and insufficiencies that lead to an increasing number of criticisms and the consequent presentation of mechanisms that aim to correct the actual system or even replace it. And, thus, the subject of our study arises, with the evaluation of the role that information plays in consumer law, its evolution around the profusion of long lists of pre-contractual information duties, which lead to protection ineffectiveness of a consumer who reads nothing and the review of consumer protection alternative ways.