CONSUMER PROTECTION: NORTH MACEDONIAN LEGISLATION IN RELATION TO THE EUROPEAN UNION ACQUIS
Faton SHABANI
Abstract
Consumer protection itself comprises a set of legal rules and practices designed to protect buyers of goods/services from unfair, fraudulent or deceptive business practices. It aims to provide certainty, to ensure that consumers are treated fairly so that they can make informed decisions by promoting a secure environment that offers effective legal redress for harm caused by defective products/services or, in the last resort, by unfair conduct. Consumer protection has the main objective of enabling consumers to make well-informed decisions about their choices and to have easier access to effective redress mechanisms, which in turn pushes businesses to guarantee the quality of the products and services they offer. The European Union (EU) has consumer protection as one of its cornerstones, as laid down in the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) from 1957 (1 December 2009 under its current name), while the Modernisation Directive (2019) recently amended four existing consumer law directives. It aimed at strengthening the enforcement of EU consumer protection rules and updated rules in line with the development of digitalisation. In North Macedonia, a new Law on Consumer Protection was adopted and entered into force in 2022. The new Law, which is fully harmonized with EU directives, regulates the provisions that enable the implementation of European law in the field of consumer protection, while at the same time containing more clearly defined obligations that traders and legal entities must fulfill towards consumers. In addition, North Macedonia adopts a new consumer protection program every other year. It recognises the need to strengthen its human resources and capacities in many of the relevant bodies, as well as to improve coordination between these bodies, in order to be able to fully implement the EU acquis. The author, through the relevant methodology, analyzed the EU system and that of North Macedonia, their comparison, as well as the historical aspect of the development of consumer protection law but also the perspective that is appearing on the horizon. The findings from the research in question provide results according to which the country has been moving in the assessment in recent years: from some progress to limited progress.
Pages: 59 - 65