Is EU Consumer Law Ready for AI Agents?
Online shopping is entering a new phase. Consumers already use AI tools to discover products and compare offers, but the more fundamental change is agentic AI: systems that do not only recommend, but act. AI agents...
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Is EU Consumer Law Ready for AI Agents?
Online shopping is entering a new phase. Consumers already use AI tools to discover products and compare offers, but the more fundamental change is agentic AI: systems that do not only recommend, but act. AI agents may book a flight or switch energy supplier on the consumer's behalf. Some estimates suggest that between 10% and 20% of e-commerce transactions could be handled by an AI agent by 2030.
This new CERRE paper by Christoph Busch asks whether EU consumer law is ready for this development. The paper spells out an implicit assumption of EU consumer law: that the person making the purchasing decision is a human being. Once an AI agent sits between consumer and trader, this assumption of consumer protection law no longer applies.
Where the framework comes under strain
Disclosure rules were built around the limits of human attention, limits that agents do not share. Consent is harder still: EU law requires consumers to explicitly ac
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