A FRESH APPROACH TO UNFAIR TERMS IN COMMERCIAL CONTRACTS: ARE THE LATEST LAW AMENDMENTS BENEFICIAL TO CONSUMERS?

Abstract

Mostly in consumer contracts, the economic and juridical imbalances between trade participants give the party of superior negotiating strength a considerable advantage by defining terms in advance. Consequently, an unfair business-to-consumer practice emerged in which sellers and suppliers impose a series of non-negotiable terms to the detriment of the consumer. Romanian regulations tried to efficiently tackle this problem being driven by the new European legislative trends. Law no.193/2000, which is the main regulation in this field, has been amended twice in the last two years and a series of new provisions on unfair contractual terms were introduced by Law no. 72/2013 and the new Romanian Civil Code. The main objective of the Romanian legislator was to reduce the massive number of lawsuits regarding unfair terms in consumer contracts and to provide a more effective protection for consumers. However, the new provisions also made changes which favour banks, insurance companies and other businesses that often insert predetermined terms in contracts.

Keywords

• Unfair terms
• standard clauses
• consumer protection
• abusive clauses
• contractual imbalances