This year marks the 30th anniversary of the adoption of
Council Directive 93/ 13/EEC on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts. The article
explores how the Court of Justice of the European Union’s (CJEU) case law on
the Directive has evolved over the last three decades. Contrary to what one may
have expected at the time the legislation was passed, the Directive has had a
greater impact on the Member States’ procedural law than on substantive
contract law. In particular, the CJEU has refrained from spelling out a common
European standard to assess the fairness of contractual terms in
business-to-consumer transactions. Instead, the Court leaves it by and large to
domestic courts to determine, on the basis of the applicable national law,
whether the substance of a particular clause is unfair and therefore void. On
the other hand, the CJEU has been keen to develop procedural requirements for
the judicial review of standard terms in consumer contracts, thus significantly
restricting the principle of national procedural autonomy in the realm of
consumer law. Finally, the article addresses some more recent trends in the
CJEU’s case law, especially with regard to the legal consequences arising for
the contract as a whole where a contractual term is found to be unfair.