Luxembourg, 15/05/2002 (Agence Europe) - The European Court of Justice recognises a Swedish legal tradition, and common to Scandinavian countries, whereas the European Commission considered that they were not apt to transpose certain EC directives into the national legislation of these countries. The Commission had challenged Sweden before the Court, accusing it of not having included an annex of an EC directive in the very body of Swedish law which transposed this directive.
The Swedish Government said that this annex had been included in the preparatory work on the legislation, which amounted to the same. In Sweden, it stipulated, the preparatory work of legislation was a "major instrument" for interpreting laws. It went on to explain that the annex of this 1993 EC Directive on abusive clauses in contracts concluded with consumers was an indicative list of what abusive clauses could be. Simple examples cannot have their place in Swedish legislation. This annex was thus integrated in the preparatory work on laws that could be "easily" consulted on the Internet. The Konsumentverket - national consumer protection body -, moreover, published brochures describing clauses considered as abusive by Swedish jurisdiction.
The European Commission claimed that none of this was enough to protect the consumer: the latter, Swedish or of another country of the EU, could have difficulties in reading this preparatory work, of being informed of its existence, and realise its importance. The best would have been to integrate this annex in the law itself, said the Commission. the Court's fifth Chamber, presided over by the Austrian judge, Peter Hann says the Commission is wrong. The latter did not prove that the measures taken by Sweden did not offer sufficient guarantees for the public to gain knowledge of the list annexed to the directive. The Commission's case was therefore rejected.