Another look at the Eurobarometer surveys

This article forms part of a special edition of the Common Market Law Review.

Publishers Abstract:
In 2011 the European Commission published its Proposal for a Regulation of the European Parliament and of the Council on a Common European Sales Law ("Proposal"). This paper assesses the degree to which the Flash Eurobarometer (Flash EB) surveys support the four central empirical claims in the Proposal. Section 2 focuses on claims about SMEs. Section 3 focuses on claims about consumers. What the author finds is that the Flash EB and other surveys cited by the Proposal offer an ambiguous picture of the extent to which contract law may create obstacles to cross-border trade by businesses and consumers.

These surveys do not suggest that there are large numbers of discouraged traders, or that contract law is in practice a major obstacle to cross-border trade. They are consistent, however, with the proposition that a small, but economically significant, number of traders and consumers are discouraged from cross-border trade by differences in European contract law. To prove this latter proposition will require further, and more careful, study.