DENMARK | MARIE JULL SØRENSEN AND KIM ØSTERGAARD 145 QXL had given some general information about consumer rights, but the court did not find the information sufficient. Placing the information duty on the intermediary can be supported by the preparatory work of the intermediary rule: “The starting point is that it is the business intermediary who is required to fulfil the duty of information and that notice about the exercise of the right of withdrawal etc. can be given to the intermediary. The counterparty of the consumer is, however, still the peer-seller or peer-service-provider, and obligations and rights that follow from the contract lie therefore with the contracting party and not the intermediary.”71,72. Therefore, for each information duty that refers to a “business” or a “trader”, it must be assessed whether the obligated party is the intermediary or the supplier.73 The preparatory Report No. 1440/2004 states that “the starting point is that the rules must be interpreted in line with the wording of the text”, which means that when the rules refer to a “business”, it refers to the intermediary74. However, this only applies to information duties and, according to case law, to the duty to receive a notice on the right of withdrawal by the consumer. Case law has yet to have the opportunity to further identify the duties of the platform governed by the intermediary rule, so this is still open ended. QXL tried to argue against an obligation to give information by referring to the principle of exemption of liability for intermediaries in Article 16 of the Danish E-commerce Act, which is an implementation of the E-commerce Directive75. The court referred to the active participation of QXL that exempted them from the scope of application of the liability exemption rules in Articles 14-16. However, the liability exemption rules in the Danish E-commerce Act do not directly address information duties such as the ones at hand, focusing instead means that the commercial practice regulation will influence the area, cf. ROGNSTAD, O. A., ’Mellommenns sivilrettslige ansvar ved handel på internett’, TemaNord 2004:512, Section 3.4. 71 L 220, 2004 om visse forbrugeraftaler og om ændring af lov om forsikringsaftaler og lov om beskatningen af pensionsordninger m.v., bemærkningerne til § 2 (preparatory work for the Danish Consumer Contract Act). 72 See a discussion of the scope of the Consumer Rights Directive in regards to digital platforms and a general discussion of the information duty of the intermediary, WENDEHORST, C., ‘Platform Intermediary Services and Duties under the E-Commerce Directive and the Consumer Rights Directive,’ EuCML, no 5, 2016, pp. 30 et seq.; and MOŽINA, D., ‘Retail business, platform services and information duties, EuCML, no 5, 2016, pp. 25 et seq. 73 L 220, 2004 om visse forbrugeraftaler og om ændring af lov om forsikringsaftaler og lov om beskatningen af pensionsordninger m.v., bemærkningerne til § 2. (preparatory work for the Danish Consumer Contract Act). 74 Betænkning 1440/2004 om revision af forbrugeraftaleloven, p. 106 (Karnov edition)(preparatory work for the Danish Consumer Contract Act). 75 Lov nr. 227 af 22. april, 2002 om tjenester i informationssamfundet herunder visse aspekter af elektronisk handel (Law on E-commerce).
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