EU digital private law : tattering or new beginning?

Abstract

This article analyses the impact of the digital acquis on the regulation of market relations governed by private law. The hypothesis is that a new EU digital private law is emerging that deconstructs the existing EU private law acquis and paves the way for an emergent constitutional order of digital private law, which has three distinct levels. The three levels of the EU digital order broaden the scope of digital private law to ever more addressees and establish distinct modes of private law and models of justice. While on the constitutional level, no particular mode of private law is established, at the levels of market ordering and horizontal transactions respectively we find contracts and advertisements on the one hand and contract law on the other as the specific modes of private law. There are also differences with regard to the model of justice they establish, reaching from access justice and non-discrimination to freedom from manipulation and substantive fairness. As a result of this three-levelled analysis, it becomes possible to identify breakdowns and extensions of concepts, as well as the emergence of and interactions between different modes of private law governance and justice.