Can consumers make informed choices online when businesses know far more about their behaviour than consumers know about how their choices are being shaped? On 9 November 2026, Professor Emilia Mišćenić, a member of FIDMA’s Advisory Board and professor of law at the University of Rijeka, addressed this question at a European Parliament workshop on the Digital Fairness Act.
In From Average to Vulnerable Consumer in Digital Environments, a briefing requested by Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), Mišćenić examines how EU consumer law assesses unfair commercial practices. She describes a growing digital asymmetry: businesses can use data, profiling and behavioural insights to anticipate and influence consumer decisions. In these conditions, providing more information may do little to help consumers make informed choices.
Mišćenić recommends retaining and updating both consumer benchmarks. The average consumer benchmark should give greater weight to the circumstances in which people make decisions online and rely less on the assumption that disclosure is enough. The vulnerable consumer benchmark should account for external circumstances that can create or intensify vulnerability, alongside personal characteristics such as age or disability. She also recommends that the Digital Fairness Act explicitly define digital vulnerability and clarify how it applies to both benchmarks.
These changes would give courts and enforcement authorities a clearer basis for assessing unfair practices online. Through her workshop contribution and briefing, Mišćenić brought research from the FIDMA network directly into Parliament’s discussion of how EU consumer law should address digital vulnerability.
Read the European Parliament briefing · View the workshop page