INTRODUCTION

Public interest is a “largely symbolic”, abstract and hard to define category, which takes different forms and appearances in different fields of law. In some of the legal fields, such as criminal law or labour law, it is easier to demonstrate the particular public interests which are manifesting, e.g. prosecuting unlawful activity, protection of employees, but in some others, the public interest appears only in a pointillist and fragmented form. This is valid also for the consumer protection field; however, consumer protection is acknowledged by some Constitutions as a human right, and we can find “public interest in consumer protection” as a compelling reason in the case law of many courts. The common ground of these structurally different categories is that neither the “public” nor the “consumers” are built of a homogenous group, and the interests of both groups’ members are hard to generalise. Both categories appear in the long-term and are optimally non-political. As long as public interest can be presumed to be a reasonable consideration for the co-existence of society (volonté génerale), consumer protection can be considered as an “unalloyed, non-political long-run economic interest of the public“. Besides these similarities, it is far from obvious what kind of relationship these categories enjoy.

The following presentation will first define (section 1.1) what public interest means, according to the author's understanding, and in relation to consumer protection (section 1.2). Then it will prove whether consumer protection can be defined as a self-standing public interest (section 2), or should be seen only as a sub-interest, which interweaves with some public interests. The examination will be carried out on three different levels, namely whether consumer protection is manifested as a fundamental principle (section 2.1), a legislative aim (section 2.2) or a compelling reason in the case law (section 2.3). To evolve a broader perspective for the research, the investigation will focus on the two most relevant market economy systems, the European and the American markets, with the main focus on the European rules.