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The present paper presents one of the national approaches used to address consumer problems, i.e. protection model. Developed in countries like the United States of America or France, this model aims to protect consumer rights against the negative consequences of production activity.

Whether it is about an imbalance of economic, informational, judicial nature or at the level of the representation of interests, the cleavages which intervene within the market in the relations between producer/trader and consumer unequivocally call for the intervention in favor of the latter. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is the argumentation of the importance of indirect consumer protection as an instrument for assuring his sovereignty within market economy.

The existence of “sovereign consumer”, appealed by the adherents of free market cult, is jeopardized, within the context of economic reality, by the manifestation of some market failures. Consequently, the purpose of this paper is the argumentation of the importance of direct consumer protection as an instrument for assuring his sovereignty within market economy.

This paper aims to demonstrate that, in fact, building a coherent national system of consumer protection in Romanian domestic market was achieved mainly due to the process of accession to the European Union, to harmonize its system with that prevailing in Europe, and especially in context of the conditions for turning the Romanian economy into a functioning market economy, able to cope with competitive pressures within the European single market. Romania is just at the beginning in terms of consumer protection, and therefore, it is natural that there will not be possible to do in a short time what in the old European Union Member States has naturally been done in decades, as a result of the action of market economy objective laws.

Although there are a variety of directives and regulations which fall within the field of EU consumer policy dealing with a rather diffuse range of consumer issues, it is nevertheless possible to identify certain key principles, or techniques, which are common to many of these measures. Principles analyzed in the present paper facilitate the legislative harmonization in this field at European level in order to encourage consumers to action in the EU internal market.

Economic reality of everyday life places the consumer in an objectively unbalanced report in favor of the producer/trader, even if the first, with his needs, should be both the origin and the final point of production activity. In this context, the present paper contains an analysis of the reasons behind the intervention in the marketplace in favor of consumers. Each one with its advantages and its limitations, these reasons have allowed the development of comprehensive national systems for consumer protection.