Brussels, 16/03/2000 (Agence Europe) - On the occasion of the "World Day of Consumers Rights", the European Economic and Social Committee (ESC) organised a conference on Wednesday on "safety
and consumption". Organised in collaboration with the European Commission, this conference offered representatives of European consumer organisations, Community institutions, economic and social players, as well as professional organisations a platform to discuss two topical issues - food safety and consumer protection on the Internet.
"By spending some five billion euro a year on goods and services, European consumers exercise enormous economic clout that economic circles should not underestimate. My duty as Commissioner responsible for this is to increase the level of consumer confidence by ensuring that they have the right to defend their interests", declared David Byrne at the opening of the Conference. Aware of the need to accompany the radical change that the Internet has introduced in the nature of consumer transactions, the Commissioner set out the priorities he has given himself, which are: a) strengthen consumer confidence in electronic commercial transactions; b) promote easy to implement extra-judicial conflict settlement mechanisms, including on-line solutions such as cyber-tribunals; c) guarantee a legal safety net and access to justice so that consumers may demand compensation before the jurisdictions of their own Member State once all other means of appeal have been exhausted.
No less aware of the urgency of re-establishing consumer confidence in food, the Commissioner recalled that the Commission's White Paper on food safety pursued that goal in that it aimed to: i) complement and modernise Community legislation by 2002; ii) create a reference European food authority; iii) step-up controls on national administrations and operators; iv) grant consumers the "right to know" through appropriate labeling of foodstuffs.
Beuc (the European Union's consumer office), for its part, took advantage of the opportunity of the Conference to join in with those demanding the right for consumers to freely choose whether or not to should eat genetically modified food. A global mobilisation campaign against these transgenic foodstuffs is currently being coordinated by Consumers International to make governments aware of the concerns of consumers. Jim Murray, Beuc director, pleaded in favour of a radically new approach to the labeling of genetically modified food in the Union and urged Euro-MPs to make the biotech industries liable for the harm their GMOs inflict on human, animal and plant health. "Now that questions relating to GMOs are in the hands of the Commission's Directorate for the Protection of Health and Consumers, we hope that a new, reasonable and coherent policy will follow", he added.