Empowering E-Consumers: 2022 – The Year Hungarian Consumer Law Went Digital

Empowering consumers has been a significant challenge for modern societies. As the economy’s complexity has grown and the emphasis of trade and consumption has shifted towards the digital arena, an increasing number of rules and regulations aim to protect consumers’ economic rights and interests by making them “digital-proof”. In Hungary, 2022 can be seen as the year consumer protection “went digital”. Transposition of the Sale of Goods Directive and the Digital Content and Services Directive marked part of a reform focused on empowering “e-consumers”. Digital transformation requires adaptation on both the supply and demand sides of the economy. On the supply side, for traders and platform service providers, adaptation means translating new legal obligations into the language of compliance. On the demand side, the focus is on empowering e-consumers: supporting the adoption of new skillsets to enable consumers to navigate digital transactions. Transformation is still underway, and, in the long run, consumer protection rules must operate in interaction with existing EU and national regulations, while also aligning with new and emerging digital policies.