WRITTEN QUESTION E-1697/96 by Amedeo Amadeo (NI) to the Commission (24 June 1996)

Subject: Single market and consumer protection

In making any assessment of the single market and consumer protection and bearing in mind the forthcoming IGC, which will be crucial in achieving a people's Europe, one of the basic problems will be to review a number of important aspects, on which the Commission is asked to comment:

1. What new guarantees of consumer protection have been introduced as a result of Article 119a created by the Maastricht Treaty?

2. What improvements in terms of consumer protection can be proposed for the 1996 Treaty review?

3. Following the recent accession of three new Member States, what is the scope for maintaining more stringent protective measures, as provided for in paragraph 3 of Article 129a?

4. Are the arrangements for consulting and informing consumers working satisfactorily?

Joint answer to Written Questions E-1697/96 and E-1705/96 given by Mrs Bonino on behalf of the Commission (29 July 1996)

1. By including Article 129a in the Union Treaty, the authors clearly sought to emphasise the importance attaching to consumer protection in connection with completion of the internal market. Under the terms of this Article, the Community is to contribute to the attainment of a high level of consumer protection not only through measures adopted in the context of the completion of the internal market but also by means of specific action to support and supplement the policy pursued by the Member States to protect the health, safety and economic interests of consumers and to provide them with adequate information.

As things stand, Article 129a appears to be an adequate, appropriate legal basis for the development of consumer policy at Community level, particularly in conjunction with the third three-year action plan 1996-98 ((Commission communication on priorities for consumer policy, 1996-98. Doc. COM(95) 519. )). Article 129a (1) (b) has, moreover, already been used on two occasions as the specific legal basis for Community measures, namely the most recent Parliament and Council Decision introducing a Community system of information on home and leisure accidents (Ehlass) ((Decision No 3092/94/EC of 7 December 1994, OJ L 331, 21.12.1994. )) and the proposal for a Directive on consumer protection in the indication of the prices of products offered to consumers ((OJ C 260, 5.10.1995. )).

2. While bearing in mind that the Intergovernmental Conference is not designed primarily to increase the powers of the Union, the Commission considers that the conference could provide a forum for looking into ways of achieving more effectively a high level of consumer protection under the different Community policies.

3. Article 129a (3) provides that the Member States are to give notification of consumer protection measures which are more stringent than those adopted pursuant to paragraph 2 of the same Article. Given that no legislative measure has yet been adopted at Community level under the said paragraph 2, there has been no call for implementation of the notification procedure referred to in paragraph 3. However, most of the directives already adopted in the field of consumer policy contain a safeguard clause whereby the Member States may maintain or introduce more stringent provisions with a view to providing a higher level of consumer protection. Such clauses have frequently been employed by the Member States. National legislative measures which are more stringent than the Community provisions have generally been notified to the Commission under the usual procedure for communicating the measures taken to transpose the directives in question.

4. Making a major effort to improve the provision of information to consumers and strengthening consumer representation are two of the ten priorities for consumer policy announced by the Commission in its communication of 31 October 1995. In particular, with a view to enhancing consumer consultation, the Commission decided to replace the Consultative Council with a Consumer Committee ((Decision 95/260/EC of 13 June 1995. )). The Commission has, for some years now, been successfully developing measures to inform consumers and is at present seeking to devise new strategies for information policy with a view to tailoring it more closely to the needs of consumers.