Consumer Law as Second Vantage Point for the Protection of Consumer Data – Protecting or Polluting the Privacy Ecosystem?

Creating a coherent regulatory framework for the European data economy constitutes a daunting task when data regulation increasingly touches on different fields of law. Whilst the regulation of data is anchored in European data protection law, it is turning into a key concern for European consumer law. Since individuals who consume goods and services in the digital economy are typically “consumers” and “data subjects” at the same time, authors and policy-makers have identified complementarities between both policy areas over the past decade. Building on these discussions, this article offers a new perspective on how both fields of law interact in their approach to the regulation of consumer data. By drawing parallels with debates that surrounded the uneasy relationship between consumer and environmental policy, it shows how the regulation of consumer data under consumer law not only contributes to the protection, but also the pollution of the privacy ecosystem At the same time, this analogy is used to showcase how existing tensions between both policy areas can be overcome.