Comparative Law and Policy Study on Self-regulatory Rules and Business Ombudsman

目前在日本，企业行为准则的作用和守法的重要性日益得到强调。消费者政策正朝着支持企业自愿努力的方向发展，以此作为取得保护消费者成果的一种手段。由于消费者保护的软法律方法在澳大利亚特别成功，并且在欧盟也越来越受欢迎，我们对澳大利亚基于行业的行为准则和ADR计划进行了基于访谈的研究，并对欧盟正在做的事情进行了文献研究。通过比较澳大利亚和日本的经验，可以发现行业协会的作用有很大的不同。澳大利亚模式侧重于以行业为基础的方法，而日本模式则依赖于个体业务。日本模式的缺陷之一是，除非市场真诚地评价个体企业的努力，否则缺乏对这些自我监管努力的有效执行机制。这项研究的结果作为2003年4月10日至12日在希腊雅典举行的第九届国际消费者法会议“消费者选择和风险社会”专题讨论会的介绍性发言提出。

Currently in Japan, the role of corporate codes of conduct and the importance of legal compliance has been increasingly emphasized. Consumer policy has been moving towards support for the voluntary efforts of business as a means of gaining consumer protection outcomes. Since soft law approaches for consumer protection is especially successful in Australia and is getting popular in EU, we made interview-based research into industry-based codes of conduct and ADR schemes in Australia and literature study of what is being done in EU. Upon the comparison of Australian and Japanese experiences, sharp difference is found on the role of industry associations. Australian model is focused on the industry-based approach while Japanese model depends on the individual business. One of the defects of the Japanese model is that is lacks effective enforcement mechanism of those self-regulatory efforts unless the market sincerely evaluates the effort of individual business.The result of this study was presented as an introductory address of the Symposium "Consumer Choice and Risk Society" at the Ninth International Conference on Consumer Law which was held in Athens, Greece, 10-12 April, 2003.