This book represents the fruit of a conference held in Oxford on March 3, 2006 under the auspices of the Institute of European and Comparative Law in the Oxford University Law Faculty. Directive 2005/29 is an important new measure in the construction of a legal framework apt to promote an integrated economic space in the European Union. It establishes a harmonised regime governing the control of unfair commercial practices. As such it represents an important exercise in the use of new rules and new techniques, and therefore poses new challenges to EU lawyers. The purpose of this book is to inform and to explore the issues raised by the Directive, issues which are of academic and practical interest, in helping to understand the evolution of European consumer law within the broader programme of European market regulation. The intense practical significance of this Directive, which heralds a new regime, is likely to provoke commercial operators to seek to exploit opportunities to pursue practices previously suppressed.

Stephen Weatherill is Jacques Delors Professor of European Law at Oxford University and a Fellow of Somerville College.
Ulf Bernitz is Professor of European Law at the University of Stockholm.