ABSTRACT
Information obligations become a more and more central element of European consumer protection regulation. The amount of information which has to be provided is constantly increasing. This is a quite demanding task for service providers. On one hand the European harmonization gives service providers some guidelines which they can rely on in the whole Community, on the other hand exactly this regulation gets - following Internal Market principles1 and aiming to increase consumer protection - more and more elaborated and demanding for service providers. The question of whether the existing regulation in fact increases consumer protection and enables the consumer to make an informed choice shall not be looked at in detail in this chapter. Surveys2 show that consumers can only deal with a limited amount of information at a time. More information will not be taken into account and might even tempt the consumer not to deal with the information at all - which, as a result would mean that too much information means effectively less information (if any at all). As this cannot fulfil the aims of consumer protection nor a functioning Internal Market the question arises if the information given to the consumer can be prioritized in a way that ensures that the consumer gets the most important information and will be able to take this information into account for his or her decision. One recent example of a different approach to information obligations is the proposed Directive on Unfair
Following the Cardiff reports Economic Reform: report on the functioning of Community product and capital markets, COM (2002) 743 final and the previous COM (2001) 736 final, cross border shopping has a role to play in achieving further integration and efficient functioning of the market.
