Now is the time to strengthen cooperation for better enforcement of EU laws

Joint statement by BEUC* and ECC-Net**

Cooperation among all stakeholders is of the utmost importance to strengthen consumer law enforcement in the EU. This is what the European Commission underlined in its 2022 Communication Enforcing EU law for a Europe that delivers. As EU-wide organisations working on enforcement firsthand, we see the upcoming revision of the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) regulation as the perfect opportunity to boost and structure cooperation further. This will eventually ensure that EU laws are applied and benefit consumers.

When we detect or suspect traders infringe consumer law on a wide scale, BEUC – The European Organisation, its members and European Consumer Centres are entitled to submit external alerts to the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities. We have used this complaint mechanism to report problematic practices across various sectors.

Our EU wide actions have had concrete and positive outcomes for European consumers and have helped change commercial practices. 

Our experience shows however that this mechanism has shortcomings. The procedure can be excessively lengthy, with several alerts pending for years. This means the longer an action takes, the longer consumers are exposed to harmful practices. Lack of transparency is another issue to tackle, with entities submitting alerts not having sufficient information about the progress made by the CPC Network. This means that consumers cannot usefully be informed about the progress cases make.

Thanks to our daily contact with consumers, ECCs and BEUC members can provide valuable insights to the European Commission and national authorities when assessing alerts and engaging with traders. As such, a revised CPC regulation should involve external stakeholders, like us, more systematically throughout the CPC alert process. 
The upcoming revision of the CPC regulation is a major opportunity EU decision makers must seize. A stronger enforcement of EU laws can only boost consumers’ trust in a fair market. Trust is a sine qua non component of a strong EU economy.

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* Co-funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or EISMEA. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

** Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Innovation Council and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises Executive Agency (EISMEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.  The opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the national co-funding partners or host structures of ECCs. ECC SE, ECC FI and ECC IE are excluded from this collective ECC-Net co-signature.