In a relatively recent strand of case law, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) established the duty for national courts to apply EU consumer law ex officio, due to the weak position the consumer is deemed to hold vis-à-vis the seller or supplier. This development has to be seen in the context of the decentralized enforcement of EU (consumer) law and the procedural autonomy of the Member States. However commendable the outcome in this type of cases may be, the way the ECJ finds its decision is often not entirely logical. It is argued that this is also the case in the recent judgment in KdG/Kuijpers, which dealt with default proceedings before judicial courts. This article examines the reasoning in the Advocate General’s (AG) opinion and the ECJ’s judgment. It will become clear that there seem to be some loose ends in both. It is not the purpose of this contribution to provide for an overarching theoretical scheme that covers all of the Court’s case law concerning procedural autonomy or the ex officio application of EU (consumer) law. The sole aim is to pinpoint some oddities. This is necessary if we want to check whether the law in books and the law in action coincide with one another, and if so, to what extent that is the case.
European Review of Private Law