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The Dilemma of European Consumer Representation in Deliberative Networks: The Democratic Deficit in the Context of the Drafting of the Common European Sales Law

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Abstract

Stefan Wrbka engages with the Proposal for a Regulation on a Common European Sales Law presented by the European Commission in late 2011 in his contribution The Dilemma of European Consumer Representation in Deliberative Networks: The Democratic Deficit in the Context of the Drafting of the Common European Sales Law. Wrbka analyses this Proposal from the perspective of the role that consumer interest representation played in the drafting of the text. To be more precise it focuses on the impact the European Consumers’ Organisation (BEUC) had (and was allowed to have) in this context. The chapter covers key points of interest in this regard, such as the perceived ‘democratic deficit’ in European law making, the question of transparency of policy-making, ad hoc transnational networks installed by the Commission to craft new legislation and the role of lobbying groups and interests representatives in relation to EU consumer protection.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For the exact data see e.g. http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/tgm/table.do?tab=table&init=1&plugin=1&language=en&pcode=tps00001. Accessed 30 July 2013. Note that the data refers to the total population as of 1 January 2013. Croatia joined the EU on 1 July 2013. In the table one can find both, the population excluding Croatia [‘EU (27 countries)’] and including Croatia [‘European Union (28 countries)’].

  2. 2.

    For a brief summary of the development of EU consumer policy see Wrbka (2011), pp. 89–90. For more details see e.g. Micklitz et al. (2009), pp. 1–60; Weatherill (2005), pp. 1–33 or Weatherill (2011), pp. 837–876.

  3. 3.

    Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Common European Sales Law, 11 October 2011, COM(2011) 635 final. For an analysis of the Proposal itself see e.g. Wrbka (2011) or Wrbka (2012), pp. 3–21.

  4. 4.

    In this chapter TEU refers to the consolidated version of the Treaty on European Union, OJ 2008 No. C115.

  5. 5.

    See e.g. Isak (2009), p. 167.

  6. 6.

    See e.g. Lienbacher and Kröll (2012), EUV Artikel 10, recital 13; Thun-Hohenstein et al. (2008), p. 130; Lenaerts and van Nuffel (2011), pp. 743–744. Lenaerts and van Nuffel also refer to important decisions of the German Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights on the question of democratic legitimacy of European policy- and lawmaking; see ibid., p. 743, referring to judgment of 12 October 1993, BVerfG 2 BvR 2134/92, 2159/92 (‘Maastricht judgment’), judgment of 30 June 2009, BVerfG 2 BvE 2/08 (‘Lisbon judgment’) linking the democratic legitimacy to the national accountability of national representatives at EU level and the direct elections of Members of the European Parliament and Matthews v United Kingdom (1999), Eur.Ct.H.R. 24833/94 dealing inter alia with the issue of direct elections of Members of the European Parliament and a (thereby) strengthened democracy.

  7. 7.

    Article F (1) as amended by the Amsterdam Treaty and renumbered as Article 6.

  8. 8.

    See declaration 23 of the Nice Treaty.

  9. 9.

    The text of the Laeken Declaration on the Future of the European Union is available at http://european-convention.eu.int/pdf/lknen.pdf. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  10. 10.

    Laeken Declaration, p. 4.

  11. 11.

    Communication concerning the application of the Agreement on social policy presented by the Commission to the Council and to the European Parliament, 14 December 1993, COM(1993) 600 final.

  12. 12.

    European governance—A white paper, 25 July 2001, COM(2001) 428 final.

  13. 13.

    See ibid. or http://europa.eu/legislation_summaries/institutional_affairs/decisionmaking_process/l10109_en.htm for details.

  14. 14.

    See Green Paper—European transparency initiative, 3 May 2006, COM(2006) 194 final, or http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/eti/index_en.htm for details. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  15. 15.

    For Weiler’s more general observations see e.g. Weiler (1998), ch 1; Weiler et al. (1995, 2002), pp. 563–580.

  16. 16.

    On comitology see in general e.g. Craig (2012), pp. 109–139; Chalmers et al. (2010), pp. 117–125.

  17. 17.

    See Craig and de Búrca (2011), p. 150 for more details.

  18. 18.

    See e.g. Weiler (1998) or Weiler et al. (1995).

  19. 19.

    Follesdal and Hix (2006), pp. 534–537; Hix and Høyland (2011), pp. 131–137.

  20. 20.

    See e.g. Menon and Weatherill (2007).

  21. 21.

    For a more detailed summary of the positions see e.g. Craig and de Búrca (2011), pp. 152–155. They also mention a third, time-wise slightly preceding approach taken by Andrew Moravcsik, referring to it as the approach of checks and balances; see ibid., p. 152 and the literature listed there.

  22. 22.

    Lincoln (1863). See also the library of congress information at http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/gettysburgaddress/Pages/default.aspx (accessed 30 July 2013) for details. For an analysis of democratic governance based on the Lincoln model see e.g. Karr (2007), pp. 18–24.

  23. 23.

    On the democratic deficit and the lawmaking process in general see e.g. Chalmers et al. (2010), pp. 125–136.

  24. 24.

    See e.g. Ward (2009), pp. 20–25.

  25. 25.

    Article 289 (1) TFEU.

  26. 26.

    Ward (2009), p. 19.

  27. 27.

    van Gerven (2011), p. 341. See also Tatham (2012), pp. 135–136, arguing that ‘… the role of the European Parliament in the Union decision-making process has been increased while the information provided to and interaction with national parliaments – as a way to reduce the Union’s democratic deficit – have improved.’

  28. 28.

    Storme (2011), p. 388.

  29. 29.

    Ibid.

  30. 30.

    Bessette (1980), pp. 102–116.

  31. 31.

    Dewey (1927). For a short summary of his ideas see e.g. Eriksen and Weigard (2003), p. 112 or Rogers (2010), pp. 1–7 with further references in note 10.

  32. 32.

    Rawls explicitly refers to the term deliberative democracy e.g. in Rawls (1997), pp. 772, 773 and 806.

  33. 33.

    See e.g. Habermas (1992), pp. 11–24. For a critical analysis of Habermas’s deliberative democratic model see e.g. Scheyli (2000), pp. 101–109.

  34. 34.

    Elster (1998), p. 8. See also the (mainly American) contributions in Fishkin and Laslett (2003).

  35. 35.

    Interest groups are not the only tool debated in this context. R. Daniel Kelemen, for example, asks for (and tries to already identify) a stronger adversarial legalism, which he calls ‘Eurolegalism’, to strengthen the citizens’ role in the European decision making. See Kelemen (2011), pp. 7–8. This approach would, however, only work ex post and not ex ante, at least if it does not show any ‘deterrent’ effect for the enactment of future acts. Another manifestation of (partial) democracy can be found in codes of conduct used by businesses as a form of a self-regulatory mechanism. They are, however, comparatively single-sided as codes of conducts are usually drafted by business groups for businesses. They usually do not reflect the voices and needs of the transactional counterpart—the consumers.

  36. 36.

    For details on the Transparency Register see http://europa.eu/transparency-register/index_en.htm. Accessed 30 July 2013. Data taken from http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation/statistics.do?locale=en&action=prepareView. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  37. 37.

    http://europa.eu/transparency-register/about-register/transparency-register/index_en.htm. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  38. 38.

    Michalowitz (2007), p. 19 (own translation).

  39. 39.

    See e.g. Tanasescu (2009), p. 55; Karr (2007), p. 155.

  40. 40.

    For a summary of the historical development of, what Irina Tanasescu calls ‘Commission consultation processes’, see Tanasescu (2009), pp. 57–80.

  41. 41.

    See e.g. Commission Communication of 5 March 1993, on an open and structured dialogue between the Commission and special interest groups, OJ 1993 No. C63, pp. 2–7 or Commission Communication of 5 March 1993, on increased transparency in the work of the Commission, OJ 1993 No. C63, pp. 8–10.

  42. 42.

    DG Internal policies of the Union (2007), p. 8.

  43. 43.

    Ibid., p. 3.

  44. 44.

    White Paper on European Governance, 12 October 2001, COM(2001) 428 final.

  45. 45.

    See supra note 14.

  46. 46.

    The Transparency Register replaced the 2008 Commission’s Register for Interest Representatives; for more detail see http://europa.eu/transparency-register/pdf/key_events_en.pdf for more details.

  47. 47.

    In the context of this chapter the term lobbying shall refer to any form of interest representation of interest groups at the EU level, which also includes public consultations, which refer to situations where the Commission takes the initiative and gives the public and/or interest groups the chance to comment on Commission plans.

  48. 48.

    Karr (2007), p. 73.

  49. 49.

    Ibid., pp. 73–74 referring to Cohen and Rogers (1992), pp. 393–472. Karr further notes that interest groups are also important for strengthening the democratic element with regard to the output (not only input) of the decision-makers as ‘providers of information, experts, and public support’—see Karr (2007), p. 75.

  50. 50.

    Tanasescu (2009).

  51. 51.

    Ibid., p. 230.

  52. 52.

    For some deficiencies see especially Karr (2007), pp. 169–184 and Tanasescu (2009), pp. 233–235.

  53. 53.

    Hix and Høyland (2011), p. 165 with reference to Coen and Richardson (2009), p. 6.

  54. 54.

    Karr (2007), p. 148, Table 22.

  55. 55.

    Data drawn from the Transparency Register available at http://ec.europa.eu/transparencyregister/public/consultation/statistics.do?locale=en&action=prepareView. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  56. 56.

    Ibid. One could of course argue that not all networks representing consumer interests at the EU level are registered. The European Consumer Law Group (ECLG), a network of legal experts from national consumer organizations and scholars, for example, was not been registered in the Transparency Register by the time of writing this chapter, but nevertheless is one of the bigger consumer-related bodies and actively comments on consumer-related matters (for more information on the ECLG see e.g. the ECLG website at http://www.europeanconsumerlawgroup.org/Content/Default.asp? Accessed 30 July 2013). The same could, however, be also said with regard to business interest groups. Not every interest group which acts at the EU level is registered. Also the number of business interest groups present at the EU level can thus be estimated to be higher.

  57. 57.

    Chalmers et al. (2010), p. 135.

  58. 58.

    The BEUC can be accessed online at http://www.beuc.org/Content/Default.asp?PageID=591. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  59. 59.

    For details on BEUC’s budget see http://www.beuc.org/Content/Default.asp?PageID=2144. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  60. 60.

    According to its statutes, one of the main tasks of the BEUC is to ‘seek by all legitimate means at its disposal to influence the evolution of European Union policies in the interest of consumers’ (Article 2.2 a. BEUC Statutes).

  61. 61.

    For these issues and some other important success stories see http://beuc50years.eu/achievements.

  62. 62.

    For a list of expert groups installed by DG Justice (including groups related to consumer issues) see http://expertgroups.govtrace.com/justice-dg. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  63. 63.

    Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Common European Sales Law, 11 October 2011, COM(2011) 635 final. The Common European Sales Law itself is attached as Annex I to the Proposal.

  64. 64.

    Pursuant to Art. 7 Sales Law Regulation the regulation would also be applicable to B2B relationships, if at least one of the parties is an SME.

  65. 65.

    For the question of its legal nature, i.e. whether it should be considered as 2nd, 28th or whatever regime, see e.g. Wrbka (2012), pp. 9–12 with further references at note 38.

  66. 66.

    For more details of the interplay of various research groups see e.g. Twigg-Flesner (2008), pp. 151–156; von Bar et al. (2009), pp. 47–56; or Cámara Lapuente and Terryn (2010), pp. 161–163.

  67. 67.

    For more details see e.g. von Bar (1999), pp. 133–135 or the website of the Study Group http://www.sgecc.net. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  68. 68.

    For more details see the website of the Acquis Group www.acquis-group.org. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  69. 69.

    For details see Wrbka (2011), pp. 94–97.

  70. 70.

    See e.g. von Bar et al. (2009), p. 55; or Twigg-Flesner (2008), p. 152.

  71. 71.

    See for example Cámara Lapuente and Terryn (2010), p. 163, noting that the “[i]nterest in this instrument [note: the optional instrument], resulting from an idea to encode private law that was on the agenda in 2001 and 2003, has gradually diminished in recent years and is no longer a priority.” Evelyn Terryn was a member of the Acquis Group.

  72. 72.

    See Commission Decision of 26 April 2010 setting up the Expert Group on a Common Frame of Reference in the area of European contract law, OJ 2010 No. L105.

  73. 73.

    Ibid., Article 2.

  74. 74.

    A complete list of the original Expert Group members is available at e.g. http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_IP-10-595_en.htm. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  75. 75.

    A complete list of the latest Expert Group members is available at http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regexpert/index.cfm?do=groupDetail.groupDetail&groupID=2475. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  76. 76.

    Hugh Beale, Eric Clive, Torgny Håstad, Martijn Hesselink, Irene Kull and Anna Veneziano were already active in the Study Group on a European Civil Code; Luc Grynbaum Jerzy Pisulinski and Hans Schulte-Nölke were members of the Acquis Group.

  77. 77.

    See Sect. 2.1 The EU and Democratization above.

  78. 78.

    See 2001 White Paper, p. 10.

  79. 79.

    The members’ list of the CFR-net can be found at http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/cons_int/safe_shop/fair_bus_pract/cont_law/cfr_net_members_en.pdf. Accessed 30 July 2013.

  80. 80.

    Miller (2011), p. 117. In a similar vein is Hans-W. Micklitz’s comment, when he says that ‘[i]t is equally common ground that the European Commission is trying to organise and to finance a substitute for the absence of a European society by establishing academic networks, by seeking input from European and national lobby groups, from European and national non-governmental organisations … at an early stage.’—see Micklitz (2008), p. 29. For further critical comments see e.g. Schulte-Nölke (2011), p. 12.

  81. 81.

    Miller (2011), p. 118.

  82. 82.

    Ibid., p. 119. Miller also rebuts the possible counter-argument that the DCFR (in contrast to the CESL) would just be an academic paper and not a political tool, when she, based on an actual example, argues that even if the DCFR were to remain merely an academic paper, it would be ‘a potent source of authority for answering questions of private law.’—ibid., p. 120.

  83. 83.

    See Sect. 2.3 Input Deficiencies in European Lawmaking above.

  84. 84.

    Green Paper from the Commission on policy options for progress towards a European Contract Law for consumers and businesses, 1 July 2010, COM(2010) 348 final.

  85. 85.

    BEUC (2010).

  86. 86.

    Ibid., p. 4.

  87. 87.

    For details see Green Paper from the Commission on policy options for progress towards a European Contract Law for consumers and businesses, pp. 9–10.

  88. 88.

    Miller (2011), pp. 136–139.

  89. 89.

    See European Commission (2010–2011), first meeting, p. 1.

  90. 90.

    Ibid.

  91. 91.

    A current version of the organisation chart of DG Justice is available at http://ec.europa.eu/justice/about/files/organisation_chart_en.pdf.

  92. 92.

    See European Commission (2010–2011), tenth meeting, p. 1.

  93. 93.

    BEUC (2011).

  94. 94.

    For BEUC’s critique see BEUC (2011), Part I, p. 2.

  95. 95.

    For BEUC’s critique see BEUC (2011), Part IV, p. 9.

  96. 96.

    Compare Art. II.—4:104 (4) DCFR with Art. 72 (3) CESL (merger clauses) and Art. III.—3:508 DCFR with Art. 119 (2) (a) CESL (loss of right to terminate).

  97. 97.

    Compare with Art. II.—8:107 DCFR.

  98. 98.

    For details of BEUC’s critique see BEUC (2011), Part II, p. 6.

  99. 99.

    For BEUC’s comments on that draft see BEUC (2011), Part III, p. 12.

  100. 100.

    For BEUC (2011), Part III, p. 16.

  101. 101.

    See Wrbka (2011), pp. 109–112.

  102. 102.

    See ibid., pp. 106–107.

  103. 103.

    European Commission (2011), p. 9. The same wording can be found in Para. 11 of the Preamble of the Proposal.

  104. 104.

    See Wrbka (2011), pp. 112–114.

  105. 105.

    Having commented on the CESL draft and its creation from a consumer’s point of view, I would also like to draw a parallel to observations made from the opposite direction. Ironically, concerns about the appropriateness and suitability do not solely rest with consumers. It seems that also the general suitability for the business side is not fully assumed. For a short critique see e.g. Basedow (2011), p. 169.

  106. 106.

    See e.g. Sect. 5.3 BEUC and the Drafting Process of the CESL above; Wrbka (2011), p. 14; or for concrete data: The Gallup Organization Hungary (2011), p. 19.

  107. 107.

    McGee and Weatherill (1990), p. 595.

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  • Wrbka S (2012) Consumers and the proposal for an optional common European sales law – no roads lead to Rome? Kyushu Univ Legal Res Bull. http://www.law.kyushu-u.ac.jp/programsinenglish/kulrb/stefan.pdf. Accessed 30 July 2013

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  1. Graduate School of Law, Kyushu University, 6-19-1 Hakozaki, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, 812-8581, Japan

    Stefan Wrbka

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  1. Stefan Wrbka
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  1. Graduate School of Law, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Mark Fenwick

  2. Graduate School of Law, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Steven Van Uytsel

  3. Graduate School of Law, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan

    Stefan Wrbka

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Wrbka, S. (2014). The Dilemma of European Consumer Representation in Deliberative Networks: The Democratic Deficit in the Context of the Drafting of the Common European Sales Law. In: Fenwick, M., Van Uytsel, S., Wrbka, S. (eds) Networked Governance, Transnational Business and the Law. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-41212-7_8

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