Objectives and Values

Abstract

This chapter delves into the substantive values that underlie contract and consumer law in the EU. It shows that lawmaking in European contract and consumer law is embedded within the ordoliberal ideology on which the EU internal market was founded, yet is shaped not only by economic rights but also by social rights. Those rights have a basis in Articles 2 and 3 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU), which ground European cooperation in the common pursuit of a ‘highly competitive social market economy’ — social justice, equality, amongst other values and objectives. While the balance between economic and social rights in this area is in flux, the EU Treaties in combination with secondary legislation, case law, and the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights circumscribe a framework of shared values and objectives within which a substantive deliberation between lawmaking actors can take place. The chapter argues, therefore, that the EU legal order has a normative basis that enables legal pluralist perspectives on lawmaking to go beyond procedural approaches.