This chapter assesses EU Consumer law and Policy in the light of consumers’ increasing interaction with humanoid robots. Amidst the plethora of benefits that humanoid robots can bring to consumers, they can also challenge the application of consumer protection principles. The biggest problems lie in the areas of protection of the weaker party, consumer autonomy, nondiscrimination, and privacy. Consumers may face difficulties ranging from exposure to unfair commercial practices, difficulties in exercising their rights under the Consumer Rights Directive, in claiming damages for AI-related losses under the Product Liability Directive, in exercising the rights – for example, to consent, to be forgotten, to be informed, not to be profiled – under the General Data Protection Regulation, and in avoiding being discriminated by credit scoring systems under the Consumer Credit Directive. The chapter explores the sufficiency of EU legislation to tackle the wide range of challenges and proposes targeted regulatory action. The rationale behind addressing these issues is to strike a balance between consumer protection and innovation in robotics.

This chapter examines diverse aspects of new technologies that are disrupting traditional consumer protection. These include phenomena such as consumer profiling or commercialization of data. It can be concluded that artificial intelligence represents a particular challenge for consumer law and policy. Consumer law should be technologically neutral. Irrespective of the technology deployed, the level of consumer protection needs to be always maintained. However, consumer law requirements must never be seen as obstacles to the innovation and the development of new technologies; and establishing the right balance between these two values remains a particular challenge.

Consumer data has become a driving force in the digital economy. As the number of data interactions increases, so too the insights into ever more intimate aspects of one’s daily life, behaviour and personality. Amongst the various products and services, one innovative advancement in the world of data-driven technology stands out as deserving particular attention: the capability to infer emotions from (personal) data and to use such information to respond to an individual’s needs on a highly intimate level. Whereas the technology has considerable potential, it is controversial not least due to the highly sensitive and private nature of emotions but also due to its questionable reliability as well as potential adverse effects. The authors indicate that the legal classification of emotions under EU data protection law is a grey area, before highlighting particular concerns in relation to the technology. With reference to the recent EU proposal for an ‘Artificial Intelligence Act’, the chapter focuses on how instruments in EU consumer law could alleviate certain asymmetries in power and information, and thereby allow for emotion AI to serve consumer needs

Exigencies of hyper-globalized, invariably transnational, trade have exerted immense pressure on the global legal infrastructure to produce a dispute resolution mechanism that attends to the needs of international commerce. In this chapter, it is argued that international commercial courts (ICommCs) possess structural features that allow them to fill in that lacuna. Furthermore, it is argued that ICommCs are predisposed to implement a new wave of harmonization of international commercial law, with English common law at the forefront of this effort. Harmonization of international commercial law is argued to be desirable both theoretically, but more importantly, from a practical standpoint of increasing efficiency. Through the perusal of the most recent and prominent examples of ICommCs, it is further posited that these courts, thanks to their jurisdictional reach, procedural laws, bench composition and judgment enforcement are substantially better positioned than domestic courts or arbitral tribunals to effect such harmonization.

The East and South-East Asian jurisdictions and that of the European Union have in common the heterogeneity of their contract law traditions. In particular, both in the case of Asia and Europe, there is a high level of divergence when it comes to the contact law regimes reflecting different legal traditions. In the European Union, among its twenty-eight Member States, there exists twenty-nine different contract law regimes. Each of the EU Member States has its own contract law regime, but the United Kingdom has both English and Scottish contract law. Similar to the case of the Asian jurisdictions, in the European Union there is also a high level of contract law heterogeneity. The contract law jurisdictions of the European Union have already a decades-long history of more or less successful attempts at national and regional harmonisation and the more recent attempt to develop a pan-European Civil Code. In that sense, Durovic and Howells posit, where Asian jurisdictions attempt to harmonise their contract and commercial laws, the European experience may potentially be valuable for better comprehending the process of promoting harmonisation. In particular, the experience gained from the European contract law process is primarily beneficial to understand whether harmonisation among different contract law legal traditions is at all possible, and, if, so, to what extent and under what conditions. It is important to note that the European model is not to be taken as ‘a perfect model’, but only as a valuable practical experience which may help explain the complexity and challenges of the harmonisation process.

The justice system is infamously slow in adopting technology.1 Although recent years saw an exponential increase in the role played by technology within the justice system,2 the legal industry has not kept pace with technical advancements to the same extent as other sectors. As put by former Australian High Court Justice, Michael Kirby, a Dickensian lawyer would still feel at home in the court halls of the 1990s courts, while a Dickensian doctor would not comprehend a contemporaneous hospital due to immense modernisation that had taken place at the same time.3 However, in the COVID-19 era, the courts and tribunals are forced to conduct remote hearings, which imposes a degree of technological awareness and proficiency on the justice system.

This chapter examines in the first place the formation of (blockchain-based) smart contracts. The term “smart contract” is used to refer to software programs that are often (but not necessarily) built on blockchain technology as a set of promises, specified in digital form, including protocols within which the parties perform on these promises. It is regularly said that smart contracts are neither legal contracts in the traditional sense nor are they smart and that the term therefore is a misnomer. The crucial question this chapter is trying to answer is whether the traditional (Common Law) concept of contract formation is seriously challenged by the rise of smart contracts. So are smart contracts the end of contract formation as we know it, or is it at the end just much ado about nothing? And if contract law is in principle fit for the formation of smart contracts, do they have features which do challenge the traditional contract law, and if yes what are those features? These are some of the questions this contribution is trying to answer.