The Transparent Trap: A Multidisciplinary Perspective on the Design of Transparent Online Disclosures in the EU

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer via the DOI in this record.In its drive to prevent market failures and safeguard consumers, the European legislator has embraced the information approach. In the context of online trade, this requires online traders to disclose ever-growing amounts of information to consumers regarding contract terms, the handling of their personal information, and the use of cookies on the trader’s website, to name just a few of the areas involved. However, whilst adopting substantive information obligations for traders, the European legislator still tends to disregard scholarship on effective information design. This paper recommends empirically tested, interdisciplinary criteria for the design of effective disclosures online, with a focus on their application in the EU. Without clear guidance as to how disclosures should be formulated, traders are left open to accidental or purposeful obfuscation.This research is funded by the DFG (German Research Foundation; project number: WU 824/1-1). It is part of the research project “The ABC of Online Disclosure Duties. Towards a More Uniform Assessment of the Transparency of Consumer Information in Europe” funded by the DFG and the NWO, Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research under the Open Research Area for the Social Sciences funding program. We sincerely thank Marco Loos and Mia Junuzović, who are also participating in this project, as well as the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and suggestions. We also thank participants of workshops where we presented this paper for their feedback. All authors contributed equally to the paper

ABC of online consumer disclosure duties: Improving transparency and legal certainty in Europe

This is the author accepted manuscript Following a series of complimentary studies assessing the current application of the principle of transparency of consumer information in Croatia, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, this paper presents research findings on how to improve its effectiveness. Documented differences in national laws and practice indicate the need for a more harmonised approach on the level of the European Union. This demand also arises from the interviews the research team has conducted with various national stakeholders. Whilst the legislative transparency requirements could remain general, e.g., a duty for traders to provide consumer information in “plain and intelligible language”, traders, consumers and enforcement authorities all require more legal certainty as to what amounts to compliance with these requirements. Based on the stakeholders’ suggestions, an interdisciplinary literature review, findings from doctrinal, comparative legal research, and a conducted quantitative study, the paper recommends empirically-motivated, multimodal guidelines to implement textual, contextual and technical measures.Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Researc

Law in Books and Law in Action: The Readability of Privacy Policies and the GDPR

No description supplie