Brussels, 29/11/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Commission considers that litigation between consumers and traders has become such a major problem that it needs to be resolved as the cost of procedures is often exorbitant and beyond the means of consumers. Therefore, it introduced a legislative package on Tuesday 29 November, in an effort to encourage the European Union to find alternative ways to litigation for resolving disputes, including solutions to e disputes over goods and services that have been purchased on the internet in a different EU member state. This raft of measures includes guarantees of high-quality out-of-court entities for all contractual disputes between consumers and companies, as well as a draft regulation to set up an EU-wide online platform (“ODR platform”) providing consumers and businesses with a single point of entry for resolving on-line the disputes concerning purchases made on-line in another EU-country. Health and Consumers Commissioner, John Dalli said, “It is unacceptable that so many consumer problems are left unresolved because consumers have no real effective means of solving disputes with traders. This affects their pockets and hurts their confidence; it also slows down European growth. Once adopted, the proposals that I am putting forward today, will help European consumers to use easy, quick and inexpensive ways to sort out their problems, wherever and however they purchase a product or service in the EU”.
The draft directive on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) relies on a neutral party (such as an arbitrator, mediator or an ombudsman) and will have to meet certain quality criteria, i.e. be well-qualified impartial, transparent, effective and fair. Businesses will inform customers about the ADR entity that can deal with a potential contractual dispute with them and ADR entities will resolve the disputes within 90 days.
The Regulation on Online Dispute Resolution will create a EU-wide online platform (“ODR platform”), which will automatically send the consumer's complaint to the competent national ADR entity facilitate the resolution of the dispute within 30 days.
The Commission is convinced that all the different parties will be better off with this initiative: consumers will have access to an effective and inexpensive way of solving their disputes with traders, regardless of the goods or services that they buy, however they buy (online or offline) and wherever they buy and will be able to save up to 0.2% of the EU's GDP (€22.5 billion), according to estimates made. For businesses, access to alternative dispute resolution will be key to managing customer relations and enhancing corporate image.
Today, there are more than 750 ADR entities in the EU, which vary considerably from one member state to the next and are sometimes available only in some regions or only in some sectors (e.g. financial service or telecommunications to name some). (AN/trans/fl)