{"id":2148,"date":"2017-11-19T10:42:47","date_gmt":"2017-11-19T10:42:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/?p=2148\/"},"modified":"2025-11-18T09:44:01","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T09:44:01","slug":"how-to-improve-eu-consumer-protection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/how-to-improve-eu-consumer-protection\/","title":{"rendered":"Waiting for EUleen Hoats"},"content":{"rendered":"

On 19 October last we were honoured by an invitation to the 1st<\/sup> Consumer Policy Academy, that the regional Health Ministry<\/a> organised at the University of the Balearic Islands to discuss EU consumer protection.<\/p>\n

We discussed \u2018How to Legislate<\/em>\u2019 on a panel chaired by the regional Director-General for consumer matters<\/a>, Francesc Dalmau, with Sara Rodr\u00edguez Mar\u00edn, professor Santiago Cavanillas and professor Joan Franch. In our view, improvement in at least four areas would help to better protect consumers.<\/p>\n

First<\/strong>, more transparency<\/strong>. The Spanish government is not particularly prone to making pedagogic efforts, if we think of State aid for instance. But such efforts would seem quite helpful in the field of consumer protection: largely, consumers do not know their rights.<\/p>\n

In professor Cavanillas\u2019s learned view, such efforts should also emphasise that the law is designed to protect only consumers in good faith. And not all consumers are.<\/p>\n

Secondly<\/strong>, better and indeed more regulation<\/strong>. Codes of conduct are not perhaps utterly useless. However, given the balance of negotiating power in the era of electronic commerce<\/a>, codes of conduct would seem only second-best to mandatory regulation. Platform markets tend towards dominance, and a dominant firm need not fear as much any other firm does reputational damag<\/a>e due to flouting a code of conduct.<\/p>\n

Regulation includes better<\/strong> quality<\/strong> of legislation. For instance, by virtue of cross references between different Spanish laws, sexist or xenophobic advertisement is deemed an unfair trade practice affecting consumers. This is plain nonsense.<\/p>\n

Thirdly<\/strong>, more deterrence<\/strong>. Article 83 of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)<\/a> shows the way ahead for privacy. Indeed, another speaker at the same conference pointed out how ludicrous maximum fines for consumer protection infringements are in certain Member States, e.g. Austria (2,500\u20ac).<\/p>\n

The success of the Commission\u2019s coordinated screenings or \u2018sweeps\u2019 of different sectors pursuant to Regulation 2006\/2004<\/a> shows that Burruchaga\u2019s incentive to score in the 1986 World Cup final<\/a> still helps: feel someone breathing down one\u2019s neck.<\/p>\n

Fourthly<\/strong>\u2026 more Europe<\/strong>! Now we would say this, wouldn\u2019t we\u2026 But one reason for this suggestion is that some Member States misread the subsidiarity principle. For instance, the Second Final Provision of the Spanish 2007 Consumer Protection Act<\/a> (Real Decreto Legislativo 1\/2007, de 16 de noviembre, por el que se aprueba el texto refundido de la Ley General para la Defensa de los Consumidores y Usuarios y otras leyes complementarias<\/em>, short – or at least a bit shorter \u2013\u2018TRLGPCU\u2019) allow the country\u2019s 17 regions to develop Articles 19 and 20 of the Act, i.e. notably precontractual information requirements<\/strong>. Some<\/a> have created obligations which go beyond Directive 2005\/29\/EC<\/a>. This fragments the national market<\/a> and, by the same token, the EEA market.<\/p>\n

Fragmentation also weakens consumer protection. A region may efficiently regulate the baker around the corner, but not necessarily a large multinational corporation. Perhaps certain aspects of consumer protection should be the subject of a Regulation?<\/p>\n

From a consumer\u2019s perspective, we should add that lunch was served at the regional hotel management school<\/a>, and was superb. The next generation of tourists to the Balearic Islands have something to look forward to. So do we!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On 19 October last we were honoured by an invitation to the 1st Consumer Policy Academy, that the regional Health Ministry organised at the University of the Balearic Islands to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1230,1222,1223,109,1080,1229,1227,1226,1228,659,617,1224,1225],"class_list":["post-2148","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sin-categoria-en","tag-balearic-islands","tag-consumer-policy","tag-directive-200529ec","tag-european-commission","tag-implementation","tag-mallorca","tag-member-states","tag-national-market","tag-regions","tag-single-market","tag-spain","tag-subsidiarity-principle","tag-sweepings"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2148"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2166,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148\/revisions\/2166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ratinglegis.eu\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}