Unfair contract terms legislation as a tool for striking out excessive price clauses? Practice of the Court of Justice of the European Union and Polish courts
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/SIT.2019.012Keywords
prices of services and goods, unfair clauses, consumer contracts, Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contractsAbstract
Under Article 4(2) of Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on unfair terms in consumer contracts assessment of the unfair nature of the terms shall relate neither to the definition of the main subject matter of the contract nor to the adequacy of the price and remuneration, on the one hand, as against the services or goods supplies in exchange, on the other, in so far as these terms are in plain intelligible language. This paper aims at offering an insight into the judicial approach of the Court of Justice of the European Union towards the price term exemption, preceded by a topical summary of the axiological underpinnings of the unfair terms legislation. This is then followed by an analysis of the Polish judicial approach as an example of a practical transposition into an EU national legal system of the price term exemption. Crucially, it appears that scrutiny is centred around the ways in which a price may be altered and consumer economic interests are protected under the guise of purely legal and not equitable (economic) mechanisms.
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