Pre-contractual information duties and the right of withdrawal

This chapter examines two key instruments of European Union (EU) consumer law: the provision of information before a contract is concluded, and the right to withdraw from a contract for a short period of time after it has been concluded. The evolution of both pre-contractual information duties and the right of withdrawal provides an interesting lesson of what happens when an area of law initially subject to minimum harmonisation is converted into one of maximum harmonisation. For the development of EU consumer law, the chapter shows how there has been a gradual increase in the technical detail of both tools as a result of a shift towards maximum harmonisation. This provides peoples with one useful lesson: if maximum harmonisation is to be effective as a policy goal, then the legal rules in EU consumer legislation have to be both sufficiently detailed and comprehensive to minimise the scope for significant national variations.