Consumer protection, sexual services and vulnerability: Exploring social justice in European Contract Law

This paper offers a preliminary attempt to illustrate the disadvantageous implications of the EU legal framework - notably rules of European contract law and EU consumer law - for individuals who are socially and economically vulnerable through the case of commercial sex. It concludes that European contract law is currently in tension with the deep concerns of social justice shared in discourses on the contested moral status of exchanges of money for sex. The paper shows particularly how the rules that aim to protect consumers can exacerbate the vulnerable positions of women who provide sexual services on the EU internal market.