Objectives and Implemented Activities

 

MAIN OBJECTIVES

The Jean Monnet Module HELACOL aimed to train learners and to promote the development of a scientific debate with a cross-sectorial and multi-disciplinary approach, that it was not limited to the Italian experience, but it was open to other legal experiences, both at national and at sub-regional level (in EU and in Latin America).

The Project HELACOL pointed also to enhance interest of the lawyers in the EU consumer law in comparative perspective. The law derived from EU introduced into national legislations a range of new safeguards for consumers (as it happened with the Italian Consumer Code), and among other things it endowed them with important informative protections (such as pre-contractual disclosure obligations) and effective means to satisfy their interests (withdrawal rights, refund rights, special cases of ineffectiveness of unfair terms, compulsory forms of ADR in some markets), enhancing a constant dialogue between national law and European legislation. The mentioned dialogue covers legal science as a whole, looking to the future, towards a supranational harmonization of consumer law and a balance between ‘mandatory rules’ (which safeguard the effectiveness of the protection levels imposed by the EU) and ‘supplementary rules’ or ‘dispositive rules’ (in acknowledgment of contractual freedom as leading principle of civil law systems).

According this framework, the Project HELACOL promoted the publication and dissemination of the results of academic research. Common interests of the teaching staff are the harmonization and integration of consumer law, the identification of general principles that are common to the ‘national law experiences’ of the same ‘legal system’, the reception of international regulation on contract law, the re-codification of civil law in relation to the growing autonomy of consumers’ rights.

 

IMPLEMENTED ACTIVITIES

Through an intensive networking activity, the project HELACOL engaged scholars and experts coming from Italian law institutions, as well as Latin American and European Universities. These scholars, together with the teaching staff, were involved in many activities by permanent dialogue: sharing essay and legal news, organizing roundtable aimed at a broader discussion on HELACOL, publishing papers and a volume of proceedings).

During the lifetime of the Project (and until 2020) was in force a webpage whit a wide range of bibliographic/academic information’s, as well as the activities carried out (from 2016 until 2018).

Due to the engagement of Professor Sabrina Lanni with Milan University, the Jean Monnet Module HELACOL lost is leader and was completed in 2018, that is to say one year before its conclusion.

   

Here some of the realized activities: