Welcome

On 30 April 2026, the European Commission re-appointed Professor Christoph Busch to the  Consumer Policy Advisory Group. The expert group comprises representatives of consumer and business organisations from all EU Member States, as well as five academics. Professor Busch has been a member of the expert group since 2021 and has been appointed for a further five years.

The expert group advises the Commission on the implementation of the  Consumer Agenda 2030, adopted in November 2025. The work of the group focuses on issues of consumer protection in digital markets, sustainable consumption and the effective enforcement of consumer rights.

“With its European Legal Studies Institute, the University of Osnabrück is among the leading institutions in the field of research on European consumer law,” explains Professor Busch. “I am looking forward to contributing to the development of EU law in the Digital Single Market as a member of the EU expert group. A key task will be to strike a good balance between promoting innovation, competition and consumer protection in economically challenging times.”

Professor Busch and his team at the European Legal Studies Institute focus on research into contract and consumer law in digital markets, particularly the regulation of online platforms and legal issues relating to artificial intelligence. Their research interests also include comparative law, particularly with regard to China, Korea and Japan. Since 2024, Professor Busch has been Chairman of the  Advisory Council for Consumer Affairs, which advises the German Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection with academic expertise.

Under the keywords “personalized law” and “granular law”, there is currently a controversial debate about the possibilities and limits of data-based law, which captures social reality in a much more granular way than was previously possible. Supporters hope that this will lead to a higher degree of justice in individual cases, while critics see risks to privacy and an erosion of the principle of equality.

Little attention has so far been paid to the question of what legal and factual conditions would have to be created in order to enable a “granular turn” in legislation and the application of the law.

Experts from the fields of law, business informatics and cognitive science will discuss this on 22/23 May 2025 at the interdisciplinary conference “The granular data society as a legal fact”. The conference is organized by Prof. Dr. Christoph Busch and Dr. Maren Wöbbeking and takes place as part of the project  Granular Society – Granular Law?, which is funded by the Volkswagen Foundation through a Momentum Grant.

 Conference program (PDF, 2.86 MB)

The founding conference of the Scientific Association for Consumer Law will take place on February 16-17, 2025 in the Harnack House of the Max Planck Society in Berlin. The conference is jointly organized by Prof. Dr. Markus Artz (University of Bielefeld), Prof. Dr. Beate Gsell (LMU Munich) and Prof. Dr. Christoph Busch (University of Osnabrück).

 Further information on the program (PDF, 280 kB). 

Professor Busch will be a speaker at the Consumer Law Scholars Conference, which will take place on March 6-7, 2025 at Boston University School of Law. As part of the conference, Professor Busch will present a paper on “Consumer Law for Custobots: Updating Consumer Law for Agentic AI Systems”. Professor Busch is currently working on legal issues in connection with AI agents as part of a  project of the European Law Institute.