Benedikt Schmitz is a PhD candidate at the sections Private International Law and Law of Obligations at the University of Groningen. He focuses on the protection of consumers in cross-border cases. In particular, Benedikt investigates the relationship between the conflict rule for consumer contracts (art. 6 Rome I Regulation) and the harmonization of EU consumer law. Suboptimal coordination could mean that the current conflict rule is unnecessarily difficult, resulting in low legal certainty and high workloads for all stakeholders.