The European integration process initiated in the 1950s has always had economic integration at its core. With the creation of a single market in 1992, this process reached an important stage. Initially, regulation of this single market was heavily based on the so-called “Community method”, which was predicated on European law. However, due to the expanding geographical coverage of this market resulting from successive waves of enlargement, as well as its increasing scope, regulating this market on the basis of legislation became impractical. The issue of disputes between consumers and businesses was no exception. Towards the end of the 1990s, the EU itself started recommending alternative methods for the solution of these disputes hitherto sought in civil proceedings issued in courts.

Some of these new methods were applicable at the EU level, whereas the others were for domestic contexts. During the last decade these practices have matured and grown into a body of rules and practices that is coherent in itself. This volume is a very timely work that examines this new accumulation.

The Introduction section of the book explains the concept of “Consumer Alternative Dispute Resolution” (CADR) and presents some of the possible techniques that can be used in this resolution process, such as “mediation” or “conciliation”. This section underscores the understanding of CADR in the book that goes beyond court proceedings.

The first chapter examines the CADR environment at the EU level. It discusses the competences and legislation of the EU in CADR. General and issue-specific networks that have been launched by the EU are introduced in the chapter. The chapter summarises the efforts of the EU to create a Union-wide database of comparable consumer complaints and their publication. It finally summarises the two legislative proposals that aim at expanding the coverage of ADR entities, improving the quality of the workings of ADR entities, and developing the already-existing ADR schemes in the field of e-commerce.

The following ten chapters focus on the individual cases of certain EU member states, namely Belgium, France, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. Although the authors acknowledge the possibility that “[t]here may be useful information from other States”, the choice of these countries is obviously not arbitrary; in the text, such major member states as France, Germany and the UK are balanced by some smaller members such as Slovenia and Lithuania. Another balance is established between the Mediterranean members and those located in North Europe. In these ten chapters, each country is examined by following a different methodology. Using a uniform chapter structure for these chapters could have made the job of the reader easier, if not that of the authors.