The Dutch Law after the Transposition of the Consumer Sales Directive - Much Ado about Nothing?
The Dutch Burgerlijk Wetboek (BW), whose most important parts came into force in 1992, is characterised as one of Europe's most modern civil codes. This is the reason why the statutory amendments that came into force on 1st May 2003 as a result of the incorporation of EC Directive 1999/44/EC on certain aspects of the sale of consumer goods and associated guarantees of 25th May 1999 (EC-Directive) can be classified as minor in comparison to many other countries (for example Ger-many). A reason for the comparatively small need for adjustments can be seen on the one hand in the fact that both the Directive and the Dutch sale of goods law strongly follow the same model, namely the CISG, and hence pursue a similar con-ception. On the other hand, the Dutch had already consistently executed the incorpo-ration of the consumer protection idea in their general civil code when the new BW came into force. So it is not surprising for example that with the introduction of the new BW a standardisation of „consumer purchase“ was undertaken in its Book 7, which largely corresponds to the understanding of the sale of consumer goods in the Directive. These reasons however should not obscure the fact that the incorporation of the Directive also brought with it some changes to the Dutch civil code, some significant, some less so. The purpose of this article is to describe and discuss these in detail