Chair of the European Parliament’s Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO), Anna Cavazzini MEP (Greens/EFA, German) was re-elected for a second term in the June elections. In an interview with Agence Europe, she explains IMCO’s ambitions for the next five years, and the link between consumer protection, continuity of the Green Deal and boosting the EU’s competitiveness. For her, there is still much to be done, despite significant - even historic - progress in the area of regulation of the major tech companies and platforms. (Interview by Isalia Stieffatre)
Agence Europe: Looking back on the last five years, how do you evaluate the work achieved by the IMCO Committee?
Anna Cavazzini: IMCO’s range of work is very broad, because the internal market is a little bit the backbone of EU integration; so that’s why there’s a lot of central pieces of legislation that are being dealt with in IMCO. I think, overall, I’m happy with what we have achieved IMCO has done a lot, and a good job. We had really some landmark legislation that updated the internal market rules and the consumer protection rules. For example, in ‘green’ (policy), It would probably be the right to repair (directive). And in digital, the DSA (Digital Services Act), the DMA (Digital Markets Act) and the AI Act (Artificial intelligence Act).
What is going to drive IMCO’s work for the next mandate?
First, having proper scrutiny and checking if the Commission is really implementing the big legislations: DSA, DMA, AI Act. There’s also often huge public debate around it, so I think these topics will stay with us. We have three big unfinished files from last term: toy safety (directive), green claims, and also customs.
I also think about this whole question on e-commerce. The commission will publish a communication on how we deal with this crazy amount of goods that are entering via these new apps on a daily basis, such as Temu or Shein, that customs cannot really control. Our consumers are not protected anymore, and European companies suffer because often these goods don’t fulfil our standards.
How do you respond to critics who say that there are way enough European regulations at this point and that we need to slow down?
A lot of legislation that we did last term was not completely new or fell out of the sky. We revised the product liability directive, we revised the consumer credit, we revised the construction products directive… I don’t believe in this “one-in-one-out” philosophy. It’s all about the quality of the legislation and then on what you really want to achieve. We need to see what we need in practice to fulfil our goals, and of course, what tools we don’t need.
The Commission is soon due to publish its “Digital fairness fitness check” to assess the state of existing EU regulations on consumer protection. What do you expect from this report?
I have not seen any draft or anything, but I expect the Commission to take up some core demands that IMCO put forward in our resolution on ‘addictive designs’. And I think that their consumer protection framework is still quite weak. The DSA you know, it’s great, but it’s a baseline legislation, we can do more to fill the gaps.
What do you mean by ‘addictive designs’?
That consumers are dragged on platforms by a particular set of incentives,which in a way influence your behaviour and your psychology, so that you really stay on the app, or buy something. Like the TikTok Lite reward programme, for example, which has been sanctioned (see EUROPE 13467/7).
Given the new composition of the Parliament, do you think it will be more difficult to find compromises and middle grounds?
I think the reelection of Ursula von der Leyen and the coalition that was built basically around this vote shows that there’s a way in this Parliament. That the European democratic forces can work together. And this same majority we had in plenary, we also have it in the committee. So I expect all involved to stick to this. It’s not a form of coalition, but this is a kind of a “von der Leyen Alliance”. You know that for us (Greens/EFA), it was not so easy to vote for her, but we did it out of responsibility.
Are you afraid the environmental and climate topics are going to be neglected during this mandate, as the focus has shifted to competitiveness and sovereignty?
For me, it is really important to say that (the Green Deal) is not a Greens pet project to save the climate. It’s a question of the survival of human mankind. She (Ursula von der Leyen) does not have to follow through because she wants to please the Greens or something. I think it’s just a matter of reality, at the end of the day. Draghi confirmed this in his report. So if she wants to deal with the realities, and if she also wants to fulfil the European climate goal that is still there, that is EU law, she has to continue with the Green Deal. There’s no other choice.
Mario Draghi mentioned in his report that decarbonisation could be a tool for Europe to be more competitive...
Absolutely, he says that basically the green transition is also the driver of competition and the precondition for competition. And I know it will not be easy. It’s not a self-fulfilling process. Some Conservatives think they can gain votes by backtracking on that green transition. But I hope they look at the realities and also the economic reality; we saw in the election campaign that there is a lot of appetite for backtracking. But I would never say that the Green Deal is dead, no.
On a personal note, is there a particular kind of proposal, a legislation that you’re attached to and hope it will come to fruition?
There’s this question of geo-blocking which we’ve already discussed and is still around. A lot of people in my committee basically want to abolish geo-blocking for individuals. And I think a lot of people in the EU, a lot of citizens, would like that. Like, if you’re somewhere in Belgium, but you’re from France and you want to watch your favourite French show, you can’t watch it in Belgium. This was a priority for a lot of members of my committee, cross-party and cross-groups. But you can only do it if you have a financing model for the film industry, because they say they still need the revenue from selling it to other countries instead of just opening it up for everyone in the EU. This is a topic that was important for a lot of MEPs last term, so I hope we’ll be able to get somewhere with it.