Rethinking Consumers in Global Production

The book explores the relationship between consumer law and global value chains (GVCs). Conceptually rigorous, it analyses EU approaches to regulation and to consumer policy oriented to safety, sustainability and market regulation. In so doing, it throws the disconnect between GVCs and consumer law into sharp relief. In response, the author argues that GVCs are a plausible venue for reconsidering consumers as regulatory actors in the global economy. This would enable both consumer protection and EU’s decentralised social ordering (based on private regulation) to be accommodated. Innovative and thought-provoking, this is an important contribution to debates on EU consumer law.