La Corte di Giustizia verso un ampliamento della nozione di consumatore?

The purpose of this paper, is to define the boundaries about the disputed concept of “consumer”, and verify whether the guidelines of the law, in particular the European Court of Justice, is set out in a perspective of expansion, generally aiming to protect the weak contractor so to extend his discipline even to the weak professionals. On the point, the dialogue between Courts is steady, ignited by a fervent doctrinal debate. The Court of Justice usually seems reluctant to expand the concept of the consumer, considering that an expanded notion would be the result of an arbitrary hermeneutics interpretation; which would finally end up distorting the system. Domestically, Italian Courts doesn’t move away from the orientation of the European jurisprudence. Differently, the domestic case-law tends to expand the concept of “consumer”, drawing from the French-native distinction between acts of the profession, and acts related to the profession. Through the analysis of doctrine and jurisprudence, it is concluded that the weak spot can not in itself constitute an element such as to indicate the automatic application of favorable legislation; rather shall be assessed case by case. Excessive expansion of the concept of consumer would create market distortions, frustrating the safeguard itself.