The Proposal for a New EU Consumer Credit Directive:Towards Responsible Lending in the Digital Age?

Large-scale irresponsible consumer credit lending across the EU, along with the growing digitalisation of the market place, in the last decade or more has exposed serious limitations of the 2008 Consumer Credit Directive in ensuring adequate consumer protection in the unsecured credit markets. To remedy the shortcomings of the current regulatory regime, the European Commission’s Proposal for a New Consumer Credit Directive seeks to introduce a number of important changes. This article discusses the proposed changes and critically assesses their potential to ensure responsible lending in the digital age. It concludes that the adoption of the revised directive would represent a major step forward in combatting irresponsible lending practices and protecting European consumers against overindebtedness in the digital market place. At the same time, however, the effectiveness of the new consumer credit directive will depend to a considerable extent on its implementation and application in the Member States

Rediscovering the Public/Private Divide in EU Private Law

This article explores the role of the public/private divide within EU private law. It shows that although EU private law cuts across the boundaries of public and private law, the conceptual distinction between these well-established categories does matter within it and may lead to better law-making in the EU more generally. The legal grammar of a particular EU harmonisation measure - which can be more "public" or "private" - may have important implications for the position of private parties at national level, for the CJEU's likely activism in this context, and ultimately for the measure's ability to realise its policy goals. Therefore, instead of ignoring the existing differences between public and private law, EU law should explicitly adopt the public/private law language in its discourse, without, however, introducing any sharp divide between these two areas