EuCML webinar: Dark Patterns: Light to be found in Europe’s Consumer Protection Regime

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The Journal of European Consumer and Market Law (EuCML) organises a new webinar on European consumer protection that will tackle a very important and topical issue of dark patterns. The speakers are prof M.R. Lesier (Leiden University) and dr M.M. Caruana (University of Malta), who have published on this topic in issue 6/2021 of EuCML. Their presentation will be discussed by dr Agustin Reyna (The European Consumer Organisation - BEUC) and dr Mateusz Grochowski (Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law and one of the editors of the EuCML).

If you would like to join the webinar - taking place this Wednesday, 26 January, at 17-18.30 (CET), sign up via Eventbrite page.

Coronavirus and digital finance: public consultations and other initiatives

The current coronavirus pandemic made our financial lives exclusively digital. This raised new challenges but also opened new opportunities for the financial sector. It is of no surprise therefore that within the EU Commission's overall focal point on fighting the coronavirus health emergency and its social and economic consequences, digital finance gained a pivotal role. There are currently a couple of initiatives that we wished to share with you.

Public consultations 

A couple of days ago the Commission opened two important public consultations.

The first focuses more generally on setting out the new Digital Finance Strategy/FinTech Action Plan later in 2020 that would identify policy areas and policy measures for the next 5 years (on the current FinTech Action Plan we reported here). The consultation is organized around three priority areas:

1. ensuring that the EU financial services regulatory framework is fit for the digital age;
2. enabling consumers and firms to reap the opportunities offered by the EU-wide Single Market for digital financial services;
3. promoting a data-driven financial sector for the benefit of EU consumers and firms.

At the same time, the EU Commission opened a separate consultation on retail payments as a key step towards the adoption of a retail Payments Strategy for Europe.

Both consultations can be contributed to by the 26th of June 2020.

Online roundtables

Within its initiative of Digital Finance Outreach 2020 DG FISMA moved its planned roundtable events online. They are organized around current topical issues and are run weekly until the end of May. The events aim to raise awareness of the work of DG FISMA and to connect relevant stakeholders. They are free to attend and encourage contribution, so if you have anything to add, feel free to raise your hand.

Pan-European Hackaton

Finally, in collaboration with Member States the Commission opened a very interesting call for participation in a pan-European Hackaton, within the #EUvsVirus challenge, to develop innovative solutions for the new challenges raised by the current coronavirus crisis. One of the domains of the hackaton is digital finance with a range of challenges. One important challenge for us is how to develop innovative solutions to support the the most vulnerable, the digitally excluded such as the elderly, who currently struggle to access financial services and products. There is also a challenge to solve other problems in the current climate such as to development of coronavirus related health insurance (see the list of challenges here). The hackaton will be held 24-26 April. Registration is still open (access link here), so if you have ideas for workable solutions, please register. The full agenda is also available here and much of the event is livestreamed on Facebook. 

Free online seminars on consumer law

In response to the current outbreak of COVID-19 The Academy of European Law (ERA) is one of the companies that provides some of their services now for free (for an abusive approach of companies we reported here). They made available some of their past seminars for free on specific areas of law, including consumer law. We highly recommend these seminars as being delivered on topical matters by high level experts.