Jovo Rabrenović / Aug 2026
Image: Shutterstock
Europe's competitiveness debate has acquired a powerful new vocabulary: simplification, scale, innovation and regulatory restraint. Much of this is overdue. European companies should not have to navigate avoidable duplication, inconsistent definitions or conflicting obligations merely to operate across the Single Market.
But there is a risk that simplification becomes confused with weaker protection. Consumer law is an especially important test. Strong consumer rights are sometimes presented as another burden holding European businesses back. This diagnosis mistakes the existence of rules for the way they are designed and enforced.
Europe's problem is not that consumers enjoy too much protection. It is that responsible companies face legal uncertainty and uneven enforcement, while less scrupulous traders can gain an advantage by ignoring rules that others bear the cost of respecting.
The European Commission's 2024 fitness check of EU consumer law illustrates the distinction. It concluded that the core legal framework remains relevant and that compliance costs are generally not considered high. The three directives examined contain no reporting obligations. The Commission estimated their annual adjustment and administrative costs across the EU at approximately EUR 511 million to EUR 737.3 million.
These figures should be treated with appropriate caution: the Commission itself acknowledged limitations in the evidence. Nevertheless, they provide important context. The same assessment conservatively estimated consumer detriment associated with problems in the digital environment at EUR 7.9 billion annually.
Those problems include deceptive or addictive interface design, personalised practices that exploit vulnerabilities, difficulties cancelling digital subscriptions and the forced acceptance of unfair contract terms. The case for effective intervention is therefore real.
Yet the fitness check also identified insufficient enforcement, legal uncertainty and a risk of fragmentation as Member States develop different rules or interpretations. This is where consumer protection becomes a competitiveness issue.
A company that invests in compliant product design, transparent pricing and fair contract terms should not be undercut by a trader that conceals charges, obstructs cancellation or uses manipulative interfaces. When infringements are difficult to detect, slow to investigate or inconsistently sanctioned, compliance becomes a competitive disadvantage. Weak enforcement does not create deregulation. It creates an uneven market.
The Digital Fairness Act, currently planned for the final quarter of 2026, will test whether the EU has understood this problem. The initiative is intended to address practices including dark patterns, addictive design, unfair personalisation and problematic influencer marketing. The Commission is also considering whether some existing information requirements for businesses can be streamlined.
Both sides of that agenda matter. New rules should target identifiable harms that the existing framework cannot address effectively. But the EU should resist responding to every emerging problem by creating another set of broadly worded obligations.
Several EU instruments already regulate aspects of digital business-to-consumer markets, including the Digital Services Act, the Digital Markets Act, the Artificial Intelligence Act and the General Data Protection Regulation. Businesses and enforcement authorities need a clear account of how any new consumer rules will interact with them. Overlapping definitions and separate compliance procedures would create uncertainty without necessarily improving consumer outcomes.
The stronger approach would combine targeted prohibitions with regulatory consolidation. Equivalent information requirements should be standardised. Overlapping concepts should be aligned. Businesses should receive coherent guidance across regulatory regimes, while authorities should have the expertise and capacity to pursue technologically complex and cross-border infringements.
A fair objection is that even well-intentioned legislation can impose disproportionate costs, particularly on smaller European firms. That risk must be taken seriously. But proportionality does not require tolerating practices that distort consumer choice. It requires distinguishing between obligations that genuinely protect consumers and formalities that merely add documentation.
Consumer trust is not external to competitiveness. It enables digital markets to grow, reduces the advantage enjoyed by dishonest traders and makes cross-border transactions more credible. Clear and consistently enforced consumer law is part of the institutional infrastructure of the Single Market.
Europe should simplify where obligations overlap, clarify where legal regimes interact and enforce where violations create an unfair advantage. That is not a retreat from consumer protection. It is how consumer protection can contribute to a more competitive Europe.
