Many of these are prompted by the responses which you provided to the questionnaire on consumer policy we sent at the time of last year's seminar, and which we have now had time to consider in some depth. The priorities of consumer policy is a key question. Legislation provides a starting point, as does our own Consumer Policy Action Plan for 1999 to 2001. This will help to focus attention where it is most needed. This leads me to the relationship between governments, enforcement authorities and consumer associations .
Consumer associations can play a variety of roles.
These can include providing education and information to consumers, including empowering vulnerable people and groups in society. Consumer associations can even provide direct support to consumers to help them exercise their rights and seek redress where necessary, and perhaps even bring cases on behalf of consumers. Performing these tasks can raise questions about how representative consumer associations are. This is a general issue for all civil society organisations in every country, including the EU, particularly where there are many different organisations in the same area. Finally, underpinning all these issues, the capacity of consumer associations to carry out their functions needs to be ensured.