European and German Law on Product Liability and Standard Form Contracts

Abstract

Both fields, I shall be talking about, have developed during the last fourty years, in both fields the law of the European Union has had a considerabe influence, though the European activities took place in form of directives only in the last two decades. In both fields consumer protection has been an important, though not the only concern. In both fields the member states of the European Union had to react to the directives, but the implementation of the European rules to the national laws varied at least slightly. Thus, though the solutions are similar, there is no complete unification of the national rules. In the following remarks I shall start with the original German solutions, then consider the European influence and draw a rough picture of the legal solutions for the time being and their problems.