The Court of Justice of the EU recently handed down its decision in ‘Costea v SC Volksbank Romania SA’ (Case C-110/14, 3rd September 2015). This addresses the meaning of ‘consumer’ in the Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts 93/13/EEC. A copy of the decision is available here.
Unsurprisingly, a commercial lawyer, despite of his high level of technical knowledge, was still capable of being a ‘consumer’ insofar as he was contracting for purposes outside his trade/profession. The question of whether a party is a ‘consumer’ is an objective one to be determined in light of all the circumstances.