Consumer Protection in Transition: Digital Transformation and Better Enforcement
23-25 September 2021, online/onsite hybrid conference
Participation is free, but a registration is needed. Please find the registration page here and the LinkedIn announcement here.
This event features academics with close links to the IACL including Prof Geraint Howells and Mateja Durovic. have a look at the great programme: https://ps7.pravri.uniri.hr/en/program/
The current Covid-19 pandemic has affected everyone one way or the other. It has also brought about a lot of uncertainty about the future, particularly regarding the availability of a vaccine and the lifting of international travel bans. The 18th Conference of the International Association of Consumer Law (IACL) was initially set to take place in Hamburg, Germany during July 2021. However, in view of the prevailing uncertainty regarding the ongoing pandemic, the IACL board and Institute for Financial Services in Hamburg, Germany (IFF), the organisers of the next IACL’s international conference, have jointly taken the decision to rather postpone the conference to 2022. The 2022 conference with the theme “Challenges and Unanswered Questions of Consumer Law” is tentatively set to take place in Hamburg, Germany during 13–15 July 2022. A main attraction of the bi-annual conference of the IACL is that it not only gives participants the opportunity to share their research with other participants (and delegates), but also to network and form meaningful research relationships. The lunches, tea breaks and social agenda cater for these opportunities. Using a virtual platform for the IACL conference will deprive delegates and participants of this integrated feature of the IACL conferences. The call for papers should follow in due course. Please continue to regularly check the IACL’s website, Facebook page and newsletters for the call for papers and further conference details.
In the meantime, we are fortunate that Prof Geraint Howells has an action packed programme of regular Webinars to fill the gap. Please check our Webinars page for more details.
The dynamics of the consumer market are such that it transcends borders and realms. The products and services traded in this market are evolving and changing on a daily basis. They are increasingly sophisticated and complex.
We are now on the frontiers of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which drives the search for a new regulatory landscape aligned with the challenges that this exciting epoch presents. If our aim is to protect consumers, especially vulnerable ones, we need to consciously consider, now more than ever, the type of approach we support. Is more intrusive and expansive regulation the answer? Should we completely rethink and innovate our approach to consumer protection and take it to new dimensions? Or do we need to consider a more balanced and proportional approach?
We invite you to join us in this exciting debate where we can freely share ideas in the interest of expanding knowledge and shaping policy in the area of consumer protection. At the 4th University of Pretoria International Consumer Protection Law Conference, we would like to explore the concept of a balanced approach between proportionality and consumer regulation and how it affects all the various aspects, policies, theories, areas and rights that is considered to be part of Consumer Protection. This would include for example General Consumer Protection, Financial Consumer Protection and Credit Law, E-Commerce and other related areas.
Send your abstract of no more than 500 words to Jani van Wyk at [email protected] by 30 June 2020.
Contact Jacolien Barnard at [email protected] or Jani van Wyk for more information
In addition … African realities and approaches to Consumer Protection
The UPICLC 2020 will include a concurrent stream of presentations for participants from other African jurisdictions (or any other jurisdiction) to disseminate the position relating to the conference theme and the position in Africa or a particular African country/countries.
We will also have a one-day workshop on 21 September 2020 facilitated by the Attorney General Alliance Africa (“AGA Africa”) on inter alia debt collection, credit reporting, privacy, e-commerce and secured transactions involving movable assets with a comparative perspective of the United States of America and how these transactions relate to the South African and African positions. Any other jurisdictions are welcome to attend!
Important information
Abstracts Abstracts must be submitted no later than 30 June 2020 and must not exceed 500 words. The abstract must contain the following information of the candidate: title, surname, affiliated institution, position held at institution and an e-mail address where the candidate can be reached. This information does not form part of the word count for the abstract.
All abstracts are peer-reviewed. Candidates are requested to proofread their abstracts to ensure that the language and style is of high quality.
All presentations at the conference will be in English and no provision is made for translators. As such, prospective participants need to be proficient in English or make provision for their own translators to accompany them. Feedback on submitted abstracts will be given within two weeks of date of submission of the abstracts
Venue The conference will take place from 21 to 23 September 2020 at the new Future Africa Campus of the University of Pretoria.
Accommodation is available at the venue and must be arranged directly with the venue. Visit the Future Africa website at www.futureafrica.science for more information.
Conference fee 3 500 ZAR which includes the AGA Africa-workshop, evening welcoming function, conference dinner, and refreshments and lunch on the days of the conference. Delegates are responsible for their own travel and accommodation expenses.
Masters and doctoral candidates, as well as post-graduate research fellows qualify for a reduced fee of 1 750 ZAR upon application to the conference committee. Delegates who only wish to attend one of the two conference days, together with the workshop, qualify for a reduced conference fee of 2 000 ZAR upon application to the conference committee.
Important dates
30 June 2020
Last day for submission of abstracts
14 August 2020
Last day for payment of conference fee
21 August 2020
Publication of draft program on conference website
21 September 2020
AGA Africa-workshopEvening: UPICLC Welcoming function
2019, the EU adopted two new Directives in the field of consumer contract law: The Directive on Contracts for the Supply of Digital Content and Services 2019/770 and the Consumer Sales Directive 2019/771. Both directives harmonise key consumer contract law rules regarding digital content, digital services, and smart goods across the EU.
At our Conference, international high-level experts from different European countries will deal with the scope and content of the new directives, their implications for industry and the question of how the new rules should be transposed in Member States. An additional panel will look at new technologies and business models (AI, blockchain, internet of bodies, Legal Tech) to see whether the new rules for consumer contracts are fit to deal with them.
Target Audience
The conference is suitable for all legal practitioners, academics, students, judges and government officials dealing with issues of digitalization and (consumer) contract law.
The conference forms part of the Project “PRG124 Protection of consumer rights in the Digital Single Market – contractual aspects”, funded by the Estonian Research Council. It is additionally supported by the Social Sciences Development Fund.
The IACL received two excellent bids to host the 2021 conference. The one bid was prepared by Santa Fe city, province of Santa Fe, Argentina, Faculty of Legal and Social Sciences, Litoral National University (prepared under the leadership of Prof Sebastián Barocelli from the University of Buenos Aires) to host the conference in Santa Fe in Argentina. The other bid was to host the conference in Hamburg, Germany and it was prepared by the Institute for Financial Services (IFF) (under the leadership of Dr Sally Peters and Prof. Dr Udo Reifner), an independent non-profit organization which was founded in 1987. After a rigorous voting process by the board of the IACL the bid was awarded to Hamburg. We congratulate the IFF for winning the bid to host the next IACL conference! The call for conference papers and more details regarding the 2021 conference in Hamburg (provisionally scheduled for July 2021) will follow in due course.
Thanks to Jim Nehf and the McKinney School of Law at Indiana University- Indianapolis, the 2019 bi-annual IACL conference brought together presenters from around the world, who discussed papers that spanned diverse areas of consumer law. Abstracts of the papers are available through this link: https://www.iacl.net.au/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Abstracts-of-Presenters-2.pdf