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International Journal of Economics and Financial IssuesBog'liq 2016 The Principles of the Consumer Right Protection in Electronic Trade A Comparative Law Analysis[#352615]-3635383. RESULTS
The issue of the consumer right protection grew internationally
important back in the April of 1985, when the United Nations
General Assembly, taking into account the legislation of the
EEC on the consumer right, adopted the Guiding Principles on
the consumer right protection, as a ground for elaborating the
policy and the legislation in this sphere by the governments. In
the UN’s Assembly’s Resolution, called “The guiding principles
in the consumer right protection,” eight basic rights of the
consumer are highlighted: Right to Choice, Right to Safety,
Right to be Heard, Right to Information, Right to consumer
education, Right to satisfy the basic needs, Right to Quality,
Right to Redress.
The global market of e-commerce is rapidly developing and,
according to the estimations of the Forester Research Company,
in 2016 its size will have amounted 1.4 trillion US dollars
(Purnhagen and Meulen, 2016). In Europe, the e-commerce
is estimated to amount 17 billion euros, and it is expected
that the figure will have amounted to 340 billion by the year
2016 (Hunt, 2015). Taking into account the perspectives of the
global online trade growth, the world of the consumer right
protection is changing accordingly. The consumers can learn
about goods and services at any moment and buy them almost
everywhere, without having to leave the house. However, during
the transactions with the participation of consumers, a multitude
of problems arise that have to do with the necessity to protect
consumer rights, regardless of the technical means that are
used to perform a transaction. A number of problems are very
characteristic for both the national and the international private
law. Particularly, these are the problems of returning a product,
of filing complaints by consumers, and some others. Buyers
should be sure to act in a safe environment, so that e-commerce
could continue developing.
The international law highlights the following principles of
electronic trade:
1. The principle of the freedom of a network contract, since it is
prohibited to force anybody to conclude a network contract
or the imposition of onerous conditions in the process of
concluding such contracts;
2. The principle of the appropriate interference of the state in
the sphere of the internet. The state has to utilize only those
measures of regulation that are truly necessary for solving the
urgent tasks in the sphere of high technologies development,
and to introduce limitations and prohibitions, only if it is not
possible to use other regulating mechanisms;
3. The principle that the dispositive methods take priority in
legal regulation. The imperative norms can be applied only
for the protection of the crucial rights and legal interests of
the personality, the community and the state. The priority
should belong to the dispositive methods of regulation of the
interactions in the sphere of electronic trade;
4. The principle of free development of electronic trade and of
supporting free competition. The legislative acts that are in
elaboration must not create obstacles to free competition, nor
any barriers to the international electronic trade.
The researches justly note that apart from the eight basic consumer
rights, fixed in the UN’s Assembly’s Resolution, the principles
of the online consumer right protection need to be highlighted
(Velentzas et al., 2012).
The legislative regulation of electronic trade, just like that of
traditional trade, is based on the principles of the equality of the
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