Social Justice in EU Financial Consumer Law

Abstract

This paper considers how social justice influences EU financial consumer law. It provides a new way of looking at social justice in consumer law by showing that equality of status based social justice has increasingly come to the fore in modern EU financial consumer law. This emergent and complex set of private and regulatory rules on credit, insurance, investment and payment products has responded to the consequences of inequality between financial firms and consumers by engaging in product and rights regulation that balances the parties’ rights and duties and protects consumers from the consequences of status-based inequality. Looking forward the paper recommends that this social justice approach must be made transparent and become an express part of EU law and policy, both in order to raise consumer trust in the internal market and to more clearly set the future law and policy agenda.