Ratio of consumer issues helped vs hindered by eu

mulder4scully

Does anybody have an idea how much consumer issues in the uk is helped vs hindered by eu laws?

Quite a lot of letters of complaint/refund templates cite underpinning eu law, and people have often won cases or gained compensation citing such laws, so I guess the answer is the eu helps more than it hinders.

What do you think?

JJ_Egan

Often the EU supposed law is overridden by UK law .

Never seen how some clerk in Belgium could actually know about consumers in individual countries and their needs .
Neither do i personally like to be told what to do by a conglomerate that i never voted for .

paddyrg

You're not going to get a meaningful answer from a forum in one country with a politically charged argument in full flame. If you are really interested, do some research at EU level.

I personally believe there is a wider benefit to trade harmonisation as we lower costs overall.

agrinnall

There isn't really any such thing as EU law, there are directives that are then enacted in full or part in national laws. I'd say that in the UK we are generally ahead of the game in consumer legislation, and that protection is stronger than that required by the EU directives, but how much that level of protection had been pushed forward because of the directives is difficult to judge.

unholyangel

agrinnall wrote: »

There isn't really any such thing as EU law, there are directives that are then enacted in full or part in national laws. I'd say that in the UK we are generally ahead of the game in consumer legislation, and that protection is stronger than that required by the EU directives, but how much that level of protection had been pushed forward because of the directives is difficult to judge.

Actually there is. Directives are law - just they're only binding on the state and not citizens. Generally, directives work towards a common goal while giving the member states a bit of freedom in deciding how to achieve that goal.

Regulations however, must be transposed directly. They are binding on a citizen level.

The only way we're generally ahead of the game is in the statute of limitations - we chose to rely on the pre-existing limitation period for action founded on simple contract rather than adopt the EU 2 year minimum requirement.

I literally can't think of any consumer rights we have that are not a result of EU directives or regulations.

Money_saving_maniac

Our consumer rights are not down to the EU at all - The Sales of Goods 1979 Act was preceded by the original Sale of Goods Act 1893, a statute drafted by Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, (who also wrote the Marine Insurance Act 1906). The success of both the 1893 and 1979 statutes was largely down to their conciseness and to Sir Mackenzie's clarity of expression.

unholyangel

Money_saving_maniac wrote: »

Our consumer rights are not down to the EU at all - The Sales of Goods 1979 Act was preceded by the original Sale of Goods Act 1893, a statute drafted by Sir Mackenzie Chalmers, (who also wrote the Marine Insurance Act 1906). The success of both the 1893 and 1979 statutes was largely down to their conciseness and to Sir Mackenzie's clarity of expression.

So that legislation highlights that consumers need more protection than businesses and gives them that special protection does it?

Or is it perhaps just about contractual rights between two parties in a contract of sale rather than consumer rights specific?

We were speaking of consumer rights - not legal rights in general.