Tag: EU

Merger control is essential to ensuring consumer choice.

Why consumers need strong EU merger control

Some big merger decisions are coming down the tracks. To ensure consumer choice and value for money, we need strict merger control write BEUC's Agustin Reyna and Vanessa Turner.

and / January 19, 2024
A Santa dressed in green carrying a sleigh of recycled gifts

Green Santa is coming to town – a year clamping down on greenwashing

BEUC has been involved in fighting greenwashing for many years and 2023 was the year where we stepped up our game. We expanded our effort cross-teams, looking at different areas of consumers’ lives and how we can make them free...

Taking on the bank – Lessons from using, not abusing, our group action system.

After four years, countless hours and 1.42 million euros spent, we won the biggest group action suit in the history of our country against Norway’s biggest bank. The cheers were many, but so were the lessons. Background In 2015, The...

/ May 23, 2019
A display of euro coins

Behind the frosty glass: the EU’s Unfair Contract Terms Directive as a tool for justice in the modern financial sector

An EU directive about what is an unfair contract term is proving really helpful when it comes to protecting consumers in finance.

/ January 8, 2019
Gavel On Portuguese Flag: Portuguese Constitution and Justice Concept

A law allowing consumer compensation that Portugal can be proud of

Imagine this: your telecom company charged you more than it ought to, or you bought a car and the company misled you and you suffered damages. Or your personal data was sold, without your knowledge or consent, to a third...

/ October 19, 2018
Consumers are better off when they fight together

Successes and challenges of the French law allowing group actions

The French collective redress procedure, where consumers can go to court as a group, will soon enter its 5th year of operation. Time to have a look at what has been achieved (or not). It’s certainly food for thought in...

/ October 8, 2018
Ryanair strike

Ryanair strike: why passengers urgently need collective redress

It can be frustrating to be a passenger rights specialist nowadays. Even if at BEUC we don’t deal with consumer complaints, a task that our members fulfil, I still get a lot of questions from family/friends/colleagues asking for advice when...

/ September 28, 2018

Altroconsumo’s experience of collective redress

If the market is the carrot, then group actions are the stick. The creation of an EU-wide collective redress procedure is currently being hotly debated in Brussels. In Italy meanwhile, the Italian consumer group Altroconsumo has used this stick 14 times...

/ September 14, 2018

E-health: your every personal detail online

New technologies have flooded our lives: many day-to-day products and activities now begin with the prefixes i-, e-, cyber-, info-, techno-, m-, net-, tele-, and the list goes on. It’s easy to get lost in this carrousel of innovation! Digitalisation...

/ June 29, 2018

Collective redress for European consumers – yes, we can

I was sitting back in a train from Strasbourg to Brussels in early spring 1998. Looking at the landscape in a train often gives you the distance you need to analyse something happening in your life. I was a young...

/ April 16, 2018