Horizon Scanner Finance April 2025 - Thought Leadership

On 19 November 2025 the European Commission published guidelines for the General Product Safety Regulation (GPSR)...

The EU's new withdrawal button requirement will fundamentally reshape how online traders interact with consumers across member states. From June 2026, businesses offering digital contracts must implement a two-step withdrawal function that allows consumers to exercise their 14-day cooling-off period with unprecedented ease. What technical, operational, and legal changes must traders implement to meet these obligations, and what are the consequences of non-compliance?

From September 2026, businesses making environmental claims in Ireland will face heightened regulatory scrutiny under new EU-transposed legislation designed to combat greenwashing. The regulations introduce specific offences for misleading sustainability claims and grant the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission expanded enforcement powers, including criminal penalties of up to EUR100,000 and imprisonment for non-compliance.

When Ubisoft shut down servers for its 2014 racing game The Crew, players lost access to content they had purchased. This sparked a European Citizens' Initiative gathering 1.3 million signatures demanding publishers keep games playable after commercial support ends. The European Commission's response and its implications for digital content sellers across all sectors reveal critical obligations under existing EU consumer protection law.

The European Union (Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition) Regulations 2026 (SI No. 124 of 2026) (the "Regulations")...

Today, the Central Bank of Ireland published the Consumer Protection Code 2025 ("CPC 2025") comprising...

To mark World Consumer Rights Day, the William Fry Technology team prepared a three‑part series highlighting key EU consumer law developments set to shape consumer digital contracts in 2026.

The European Consumer Protection Cooperation Network has published a list of Key Principles on In-Game Virtual Currencies (the "Principles") for traders in the gaming sector.

The European Union's Green Transition Directive introduces sweeping changes to consumer protection law, targeting misleading environmental claims and sustainability labels across all sectors. Ireland's implementing regulations, effective September 2026, will prohibit generic green claims, require detailed verification of environmental promises, and ban sustainability labels lacking proper certification. Financial services firms must now navigate expanded rules on misleading practices, particularly regarding

Ireland has transposed the EU's Distance Marketing of Financial Services Directive II into national law through new regulations that fundamentally reshape how financial services firms must interact with consumers online. The European Union (Distance Contracts for Financial Services) Regulations 2026 introduce stringent pre-contractual disclosure requirements, mandatory online cancellation functions, and explicit prohibitions against manipulative interface design. Digital financial service providers must now