The Silent Death of EU Consumer Law and Its Resilient Revival: Reinventing Consumer Protection Against Unfair Digital Commercial Practices

This article examines the silent death of EU consumer law in the face of digital transformation. It argues that the traditional consumer protection framework—once grounded in the figure of the consumer, the principle of fairness, and the standard of professional diligence—has been eroded by legal fragmentation, regulatory displacement, and the conceptual fading of the consumer as a distinct legal subject. Sector-specific instruments such as the Digital Services Act, Digital Markets Act, and Artificial Intelligence Act have sidelined horizontal protections and reframed individuals as “users” or “natural persons,” weakening the normative and institutional coherence of consumer law. In response, the paper calls for a resilient revival through a Digital Fairness Act: a dedicated horizontal instrument addressing the structural and behavioural asymmetries of digital markets. Anchored in the concept of digital professional diligence, the proposed Digital Fairness Act would restore fairness and enforceability by targeting manipulative design, algorithmic opacity, and autonomy-distorting commercial practices. The article offers a doctrinal blueprint for such reform, arguing that only a systemic recalibration can meaningfully reinvigorate consumer law in the algorithmic age.