Volume 21, Issue 2

The European population is ageing, and this demographic shift presents significant challenges for private law. Current legal frameworks lack elderly-specific protections, limiting the ability to effectively safeguard older individuals. Although scholarly interest in ageing is growing, the legal concept of vulnerability in EU consumer law still does not adequately recognize the elderly as a distinctively vulnerable group. Marketing and behavioral research – including recent EU-level reports – have identified older consumers as exhibiting a unique set of vulnerabilities. Building on this evidence, the article proposes alternative legal approaches that move beyond the current reluctance to treat the elderly as a specifically protected category. The article concludes that extending greater legal protection to elderly individuals would mark a crucial step toward a more inclusive society – especially in the face of rapid demographic change.

Today global production is organised through intricate and complex global value chains that grant us access to goods, services, technology, and know-how. Hundreds and thousands of companies participate in these global value chains and are connected by way of contracts. These contracts lay down rules and obligations regarding commercial relationships. Increasingly, such contracts also include obligations regarding human rights and environmental impacts of the global value chain activities. However, traditional contracting has been ineffective in addressing adverse human rights impacts in value chains. Thus, this article proposes the use of proactive contracting, in light of the new worldwide developments, to better accommodate human rights in value chain contracts. It engages in a qualitative empirical inquiry into the general terms and conditions, and the corporate policies that are incorporated into these general terms and conditions, to explore the current contractual practices of the companies in the extractive sector.

This article provides an overview of the most relevant cases decided by the Court of Justice of the European Union concerning contract law. The present issue covers the period between the beginning of July 2024 and the end of December 2024. Out of a total of 104 judgments decided in this period, 34 had a contract law dimension.