論德國民法之消費者概念

On the Concept of Consumers in German Civil Law

現代民事法律的任務之一，在於提供有效且合理的消費者保護，如此一來，在相關個案中誰是需要被保護的消費者，也就是法律上消費者概念如何定義理解的問題，就變成一個重要的法律問題，因為其為適用這些具體保護規定的前提要件。而針對這個問題，也就是消費者定義，不同的國家可能有不同的指引想法與具體規定，所謂他山之石可以攻錯，本文將以德國民法上消費者概念來作為討論對象，並分析其概念的構成與相關分類上的難題。而之所以選擇德國民法上消費者概念來討論，乃是德國民法上對於消費者的定義採取與台灣消費者保護法第2條第1款規定不同的方式予以處理，並且在民法典中統一規定，從而具有一般普遍性的意義，對於日後臺灣要進行相關概念之修正討論時有相當的參考價值。本文接下來會討論在德國民的消費者定義規定及其發展，之後討論在德國民法上消費者概念之法定構成要件，並分析其內容，隨後介紹其分類上可能出現的困難問題，最後在完成理解德國民法上消費者概念後的前提下，提出本文對於我國消費者保護法下之消費者定義的一些反思作為結論。

One of the tasks of modern civil law is to provide effective and reasonable consumer protection. As a result, determining who the protected consumer is in relevant cases, and how the legal concept of a consumer is defined and understood, becomes an important legal issue because it is a prerequisite for applying these specific protection provisions. Different countries may have different ideas and specific regulations regarding consumer definitions. Therefore, this article chooses to study the concept of consumers in German civil law as a discussion topic to analyze the challenges in the concept’s composition and related classification. The reason for choosing the German civil law definition of consumers for discussion is because it takes a different approach than the Taiwan Consumer Protection Act’s definition in the first paragraph of Article 2, and it is uniformly regulated in the Civil Code, thereby having general universality and considerable reference value for Taiwan’s future discussions on the revision of related concepts. The article discusses the definition of consumers in German civil law and its development, followed by the legal requirements for the composition of the consumer concept in German civil law and an analysis of its content. The potential difficulties in classification is then introduced subsequently. Finally, on the premise of understanding the consumer concept in German civil law, the article concludes by offering some reflections on the definition of consumers under Taiwan’s Consumer Protection Act.