Information Rights and Obligations: A Challenge for Party Autonomy and Transactional Fairness (Markets and the Law)

Annotation Information requirements have become a key element of consumer policy at the European level and are also gaining increasing importance in all other areas of private law. The law stipulates that information provided should not be misleading and also involves requirements regarding the fairness and objectivity of what has been provided. In addition to controlling the veracity of what is voluntarily offered by traders, the law increasingly requires disclosure of certain information. This volume focuses especially on the question of how these information requirements influence the party autonomy. International contributors explore in various contexts whether the legislative policy regarding the information requirements and their relationship to party autonomy has been properly thought through Cover......Page 1 Half Title......Page 2 Title Page......Page 4 Copyright Page......Page 5 Table of Contents......Page 6 List of Contributors......Page 8 Foreword......Page 10 Introduction......Page 12 1 Autonomy and Fairness: The Case of Public Statements......Page 16 2 The Strategy and the Harmonization Process within the European Legal System: Party Autonomy and Information Requirements......Page 32 3 Evolution of Party Autonomy in a Legal System under Transformation - Recent Developments in Poland under Special Consideration of the Package Travel Directive......Page 48 4 From Truth in Lending to Responsible Lending......Page 62 5 EC Directives for Self-Employed Commercial Agents and on Time-Sharing - Apples, Oranges and the Core of the Information Overload Problem......Page 82 6 Information Requirements in the E-Commerce Directive and the Proposed Directive on Unfair Commercial Practices......Page 108 7 Contractual Disclosure and Remedies under the Unfair Contract Terms Directive......Page 130 8 Information Disclosure about the Quality of Goods - Duty or Encouragement?......Page 150 9 Information and Product Liability - A Game of Russian Roulette?......Page 170 10 Duties to Inform versus Party Autonomy: Reversing the Paradigm (from Free Consent to Informed Consent)? - A Comparative Account of French and English Law......Page 186 11 The Information Requirements in the Principles of European Private Law ‘Long-Term Commercial Contracts: Commercial Agency, Distribution, Franchise’ - A Model for a European Civil Code?......Page 204 Annex: Principles of European Private Law Long-Term Commercial Contracts: Commercial Agency, Distribution, Franchise......Page 220 Index......Page 238 Information obligations has become an important technique at the European level of European Private Law. Certainly this is obvious in consumer law, but as this collection of essays demonstrates, it applies in other fields too What do we mean, in general, when we refer to parties having autonomy or being autonomous in the context of a contractual relationship?