Brussels, 22/05/2008 (Agence Europe) - Parliament is in favour of a European strategy to enhance consumer confidence in the internal market. On 20 May in Strasbourg, it gave the go ahead by a comfortable majority (438 votes for, 84 against and 166 abstentions) to the Community strategy on consumer policy for 2007-13, presented by the Commission in March 2007 (EUROPE 9385). Following Lasse Lehtinen (PES, Finland), the author of the own-initiative report, MEPs claimed that bolstering consumer confidence in the internal market was imperative in order for the EU market to become the biggest retail market in the world.
In its communication, the European Commission said that one of the essential ways of reaching the objectives was to reinforce the collective appeals system in the event of regulation failing to protect consumers, and in the event of violations to Community rules on price fixing. Parliament finds in its favour, at least on the question of solving cross-border disputes.
In response to a PES Group proposal, supported by the ALDE, Greens/EFA and the GUE/NGL, MEPs called on the Commission to assess, by consulting the Parliament and member states, whether a coherent solution at a European level could be found, offering all consumers access to collective appeals mechanisms in order to settle cross border litigation by paying particular attention to excesses and inconvenient aspects of the system and, if needs be, presenting a suitable proposal.
Lasse Lehtinen explained that “in a market where goods and services circulate freely, it appears both logical and coherent to recognise that consumers living in Germany, Spain or Poland have the right to bring their complaints together when they have been victim of the same abuse”. The rapporteur added that “this is not, however, a matter of introducing the US model of class actions to Europe. Consumer compensation should, for example, be based on the real cost of the damages”.
Hostile to these amendments, the EPP-ED Group abstained. While saying that they supported the objectives in the strategy, MEPs from the centre right said that it was premature to introduce a collective appeals system into the EU, while studies were going on at the Commission on the existing systems in the member states. Malcolm Harbour (EPP-ED, United Kingdom), spokesman for the group at the internal market/consumers committee, cited the difficulty of finding a legal basis in the treaty for a procedure that involved both civil and criminal law. He also underlined the benefit of waiting for the Commission's communication on enforcement, planned this autumn. MEPs are also calling for an increase in consumer information campaigns (particularly for vulnerable people, the old, children and disabled persons). They propose the setting up of a “European Ombudsman in charge of cross-border consumer litigation” and support the idea of appointing advisors in charge of consumer relations at the Commission. (A.N.)