Towards a Sustainable Consumer Contract Law

If legal instruments are applied insofar, price incentives are in the forehand by making products, which are unwanted under aspects of sustainability, more expensive and sustainable products and services cheaper. Again, these are means of economic administrative law. This paper asks, whether private law could play a role alongside administrative law. We will limit ourselves to (consumer) contract law and examine, whether contractual claims granted to consumers could contribute to sustainability and how they should be shaped. This is a question which cannot be addressed to the national law maker, as most of the relevant law is already European law. We therefore start to analyse the cascade from international to European and national law to find out, which role sustainable consumption already plays at the different levels, and whether environmental policy and consumer policy are already linked or still separate policies (II). In a next step we will identify some instruments out of the many possible instruments for the purposes of sustainability, which could be used by private law to have impact on the demand side (III). There is a wide discussion about instruments which cannot be taken up here; we have to limit ourselves to a pragmatic approach. Finally, we will analyse, whether the instruments identified in part III, could be applied in selected types of contract (IV). Our result will be that further research on that topic is worth to be undertaken (V).