For Article 17(1) of Regulation No 1215/2012 and Article 6(1) of Regulation No 593/2008, "trade or profession" covers paid employment as well as self-employed activity. An agreement between an employee and a third party other than the employer named in the employment contract, under which that third party is directly liable to the employee for the employer's obligations under that contract, is not a contract concluded outside and independently of any trade or professional activity or purpose.

A natural person who uses a brokerage company to trade on the international FOREX market under a contract such as a CfD is a "consumer" for Article 17(1) if entering into that contract did not fall within that person's professional activity, which is for the national court to ascertain. For that classification, the value of the transactions, the scale of the financial risk, the person's knowledge or expertise in financial instruments, and that person's active conduct in the transactions are, as such, in principle irrelevant. It is likewise, as such, in principle irrelevant that the financial instruments fall outside Article 6 of Regulation No 593/2008 or that the person is a "retail client" within the meaning of Article 4(1)(12) of Directive 2004/39/EC.