Type: Acts of the European Union: European Parliament resolution on a new strategy for consumer policy

Authority: European Authorities - European Union: European Parliament

Date: 11/15/2011

Subject: The European Parliament welcomes the Commission's initiative to launch a Consumer Agenda, and emphasises the need for the Commission to propose a proactive policy for defining smart regulation, with the objective of achieving a coherent legal framework; calls, further, for all future consumer policy measures to be based on a holistic approach which places consumers at the heart of the Single Market; it highlights the numerous challenges facing the Consumer Agenda, including empowering consumers and reducing levels of inequality, encouraging sustainable consumption, reducing consumer exposure to unsafe products and protecting consumers, especially children, against misleading advertising; calls for an in-depth review among policy-makers of ways of designing smarter policies which provide consumers with information they need and can actually use, without creating additional burdens for companies; it notes the significant increase in e-commerce, which is now very important to consumers, with 40% of EU citizens purchasing online; points out that consumers' and retailers' confidence needs to be increased, particularly as regards cross-border online purchasing and trading, by guaranteeing their respective rights and obligations on the internet; it stresses the need to inform consumers about their rights and obligations and ensure that consumers' rights are fully respected when it comes to internet use and protection of intellectual property rights, at the same time protecting personal data and privacy; it stresses the urgent need to increase the general level of safety of consumer products in the EU, especially in the framework of the forthcoming revision of the General Product Safety Directive; it calls for more accessible and more effective redress mechanisms, such as alternative dispute resolution, collective redress or online dispute resolution, in order to empower consumers throughout the EU; notes with concern that the current lack of compensation is a major loophole in the legal system as it allows for illegal profits to be retained by traders.

Classification: Freedoms - Art. 7 Privacy - Art. 8 Personal data: fairly processing - Personal data: consent - Personal data: access - Personal data: rectification - Personal data: independent authority - Solidarity - Art. 35 Preventive health care - Art. 38 Consumer protection - Justice - Art. 47 Justice: remedy

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