Brussels, 02/12/2003 (Agence Europe) - EU Ministers for Consumer Policy held a first policy debate in Brussels on Monday on the proposal of regulation aimed at increasing administrative cooperation between Member States to increase protection of consumer rights in the internal market with the creation of a real European network of competent national authorities (see EUROPE of 29 November, p.7, and 29 July, p;9). All recognised it would be of use to improve the currently informal cooperation system to more effectively counter dishonest professionals who take advantage of crossborder transactions by Internet, direct mail or any other means detrimental to consumers' rights protected by Community legislation. Belgium, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden and Finland said they were in favour of the framework proposed by the Commission.
Nonetheless, the means proposed by the Commission to achieve the objective are not supported unanimously. On the basis of a questionnaire prepared by the Italian Presidency, a large majority of delegations (mainly Germany, Austria, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia and Lithuania) consider that the obligation that would be imposed on Member States to regularly report to the Commission on complaints filed by consumers and infringements committed - whether such infringements are of a purely national nature or have crossborder implications - goes beyond the scope of the regulation which should exclusively cover crossborder infringements of Community consumer law.
Several delegations, which fear too much red tape and extra administrative financial costs (France, Poland) expressed their preference for the relevant national authorities to improve their mutual assistance by making better use of the existing European networks for the protection of consumers' interests (such as the network of competent bodies for the amicable settlement of disputes), in compliance with the proportionality of measures (Luxembourg insisted on this point).
Germany, Austria, Hungary and Slovenia also expressed concern caused by the incompatibility between creation of a European network of competent national authorities and their national system, which entrusts the task of dealing with consumers' complaints to private, not public, bodies.
Commissioner David Byrne said there had been a misunderstanding about the level of precision needed from Member States when providing national data to the Commission. The latter simply wants to establish a statistical database on the number of infringements recorded for the 17 European directives covered by the future regulation, he explained.
Whatever, the guidelines reached by the Council in favour of a more restricted scope will allow technical work to be pursued on the text, pending the Parliament opinion at first reading foreseen for February 2004.