Yesterday (14 September 2023), the Court of Justice delivered two judgments on the interpretation of the provisions regulating cross-border consumer contracts.
The two decisions offer the latest views of the Court on this sensitive topic in cases related to contracts providing the grant of a certain number of points enabling the parties to enjoy, for a fixed period, a range of accommodation in various countries in Europe – so called club-points-based timeshare contracts – (Case C-632/21), and timeshare contracts in respect of tourist accommodation (Case C‑821/21).
The referring Courts (in both cases, Spanish Courts) asked several questions to the Court of Justice. In a nutshell, those questions regarded: (i) the qualification of the cross-border nature of the contracts (Case C-632/21); (ii) which provision of the 1980 Rome Convention and Regulation (EC) No 593/2008 (Rome I) must be applied in order to determine the law applicable to club-points-based timeshare contracts (C-632/21) and to timeshare contracts in respect of tourist accommodation (Case C‑821/21); (iii) the relationship between the law applicable to consumer contracts and the law chosen by the parties (both cases); and (iv) the interpretation of the expression “other party to a contract” foreseen in Art 18(1) of Regulation (EU) No 1215/2012 (Case C‑821/21).
On consumer contracts PIL rules, the readers of RDIPP may refer to:
Franco Mosconi, 1993, No 1, 5 ff.; Luigi Fumagalli, 1994, No 1, 15 ff.; Giuseppina Pizzolante, 2006, No 4, 987 ff.; Edoardo Benvenuti, 2020, No 3, 583 ff.
Moreover, on the law applicable to consumer contracts, see, in our Book Series:
Tullio Treves (ed.), Book No 19; Paola Piroddi, Book No 79.