Brussels, 25/10/2001 (Agence Europe) - The European Consumers' Organisation BEUC and the Union of Industrial and Employers' Confederations of Europe, UNICE, announced on Monday that they had reached agreement on a European accreditation system for labels of confidence in e-commerce.
The agreement was presented to the European Commission as a contribution to the policy of enhancing confidence in e-commerce, more specifically the "e-Confidence" initiative launched by Commissioner Byrne in May 2000. In the online world, companies wanting to win consumers' trust often join schemes that award labels of confidence. Reliable schemes can help identify companies that have pledged to respect certain standards or guidelines in their e-commerce business, but the proliferation and variety of confidence labels runs the danger of leading consumers astray. Monday's agreement will help deal with this by proposing a common framework for accrediting confidence labels - the proposal submitted to the Commission incorporates a series of criteria for the labels and a detailed accreditation and monitoring system based on assessment by an independent third party. The full agreement can be consulted on BEUC and UNICE's websites, http: //http://www.beuc.org and http: //http://www.unice.org .