Consumer protection

This book highlights a series of key aspects regarding the insurance and improvement of the consumers’ rights and interests, respectively their protection.
Consumer protection is treated both as a state protection obviously insured by the state through laws, market surveillance and control institutions, and other levers and mechanisms of protection, and as a consumers self-protection, which is done at individual level and also at associative level by the consumer associations, through a proper information and education.
The paper is structured in eight chapters, respectively: The Conceptual Framework of Consumer Protection, refers to the concept of consumer and consumer protection, types of consumers and the need for consumer protection; Consumer protection at international level, highlights the guiding principles of consumer protection, fundamental rights of consumers and the main bodies involved in consumer protection at global level; Consumers protection at the European Union level, treats the issue of European consumers as beneficiaries and agents of building the single European market, the legislative and administrative framework, the strategy regarding the consumer protection policy during 2007-2013, and the cooperation between national authorities responsible to implement the European legislation regarding consumer protection; Consumer protection in Romania, outlines the specific issues of consumer protection at national level regarding the legislative and administrative framework; Consumer protection and competition, in the first part highlights several features of economic competition and then refers to the competition policy and consumer at EU and national level, and in the final part presents the competition policy – the main instrument for the protection of consumers’ interests; Particular issues concerning consumer protection, addresses some of the most important specific issues concerning consumer protection, respectively: product safety, unfair trade practices, the indication of prices, sales practices, electronic commerce and consumption credit; Consumers’ education and information, highlights the need to educate and inform consumers, the general framework regarding the obligation to inform and educate consumers, the goals and objectives of Consumer Education, the main aspects regarding the consumer education and information process, and product labelling - the main source of consumer information; Consumer rights protection, outlines the structuring of consumer complaints, the main deficiencies of the products claimed by consumers, the National Authority for Consumer Protection, the main defender of consumer rights and forms of action to protect consumer rights. 
Based on a comprehensive legal, economic, and sociological documentation, and also on the knowledge and use of the community acquis, the paper entitled Consumer Protection encompasses a solid theoretical and methodological framework, able to guide the policies and practices in this field.