I was honoured to be asked by Edward Elgar Publishing to act as editor for a Research Handbook on EU Consumer and Contract Law. This is an area of law where much has happened over the last decade or so, but at the same time, there is still a lot of further research to be undertaken. I hope that the contributions to this Research Handbook will encourage legal scholars to pursue fresh routes of enquiry in what is now a very rich and increasingly complex field of legal scholarship. I am grateful to all the colleagues who agreed to contribute a chapter to this Handbook. For many legal scholars, the time for scholarly work such as writing a chapter for a Handbook is increasingly squeezed by the need to channel all available research time on research outputs which meet the criteria for research excellence now used in many countries as a means of allocating research funding. I am therefore particularly pleased that so many leading scholars with expertise in EU Consumer and Contract Law agreed to participate, and that they remained patient with me when medical circumstances intervened to slow down my ability to complete the editing process for this Handbook. Contributors were able to update their text in light of very recent developments during late summer/early autumn 2015, but with things happening so rapidly in this area, some chapters will be affected by subsequent developments. Nevertheless, I hope that readers will both enjoy and benefit from this Research Handbook.