Mission and vision

Mission and vision

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Who are we?
Why we are unique
What is our mission?
What is our vision of a consumer-friendly EU?
Fundamental assets to achieve our Mission and Vision


Who are we?

BEUC is a European-level umbrella organisation of independent national organisations that represent consumer interests.

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Why we are unique

BEUC’s strength and uniqueness come from the legitimacy that we derive from our diverse and large network of independent member organisations that cover all EU countries and beyond. The trust and cooperation with and between our members give us the expertise, experience and commitment to promote consumer interests. This allows us to share intelligence about consumer harm, to analyse potential solutions, to work together on our advocacy and to undertake joint and co-ordinated enforcement actions.

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What is our mission?

BEUC’s mission is, together with our members, to influence EU policies and so achieve a sustainable and fair economy and society for European consumers, as part of a globalised economy.

This includes working to shape the EU regulatory and policy framework, to contribute to and facilitate enforcement of rights at EU and national levels, and to protect and promote consumers’ health, safety, legal and economic interests.

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What is our vision of a consumer-friendly EU?

BEUC works to achieve an EU that delivers strong consumer protection, now and in the future, in line with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This means:

 

  1. Empowering consumers to make sustainable choices by ensuring that the easiest, most affordable and attractive options across all product and service sectors are sustainable
  2. Ensuring that consumers benefit from an open, competitive Single Market, both in the bricks-and-mortar and the digital economy, whilst fully maintaining their autonomy and privacy
  3. Protecting and empowering consumers “by default and by design” so that, in an increasingly complex and technological world, they can rely on essential safeguards that always apply and - where possible - automatically
  4. Ensuring that consumers benefit from efficient enforcement of their rights, that enforcement authorities can fulfil their mandates effectively, and that consumers have tools to obtain proper redress
  5. Protecting consumers well also in global markets, through the EU upholding consumer interests in co-operation and trade agreements with non-EU countries
  6. Seeking inclusive, transparent and accountable institutions and governance processes that benefit consumers and the broader public interest
  7. Promoting a vibrant consumer movement, where consumer organisations represent consumer interests with policy makers and regulators at EU and national level and enable them to get access to justice where necessary.

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Fundamental assets to achieve our Mission and Vision

Our values and processes

Evidence-based approach
Our positions and requests for action to policy-makers are based on sound evidence gathered by our members from their daily contacts with consumers and/or their thorough analysis of situations faced by consumers. This increases our influence with EU policy-makers and encourages them to take consumer interests fully into account when designing and rolling out their policies. We bring added value by focusing on the consumer experience and subjecting policy approaches to reality checks and behavioural responses.

Constructive and out-of-silo advocacy
Our positions, when identifying shortcomings or gaps in consumer protection, systematically provide constructive solutions to policy-makers to overcome those gaps or to improve the current system. We aim to provide policy-makers with strong, trustworthy analysis on the need to take action to uphold the consumer interest. This approach means that we base our contacts with policy-makers on respect, legitimacy and professionalism. We are proud of our interdisciplinary approach, both for policy and enforcement work.

Inclusiveness
BEUC bases its advocacy positions on inclusiveness, with the aim of representing the full diversity of consumer interests and perspectives. We pay specific attention not only to the needs of the more vulnerable but also to identifying new types of vulnerability which change as market conditions evolve. More generally, our 2022-2025 strategy reflects more than ever the diversity of consumer needs and expectations, depending e.g., on age and education. The strategy in particular aims at reaching out to the younger generations, to adequately represent their specific concerns and requests.

Plain language communication
We strive to communicate our policy positions in a way that is comprehensible outside the very limited sphere of the EU institutions, so that they can be understood and acted upon by national policy makers and stakeholders.

Long-term perspective
We take a long-term perspective on consumer interests, with a view to raising awareness of – and addressing - the hidden price tag for our society of less sustainable and less human-centric policies.

Strengthening the consumer movement
While BEUC is traditionally considered to be primarily involved in advocacy, the secretariat has invested over the last years in building the capacity of consumer professionals at national level to deliver their objectives. Our capacity building team designs, develops and supports training courses not only on policy topics, but also on strategic planning, project management and fundraising, with a view to enhancing the sustainability of consumer organisations across Europe.

Going the last mile: enforcement and redress
The very best consumer legislation is pointless unless it is properly implemented and enforced to benefit consumers on the ground. Therefore, in recent years enforcement of consumer rights, both at national, cross-border and EU level has become an important cornerstone of BEUC’s strategy to fulfil its mission. This workstream covers several aspects: support and coordination of our members’ efforts to enforce consumer rights, outreach to EU networks of enforcement authorities, in co-ordination with or complementing our members’ actions towards national regulators, as well as intervention as a complainant or third party in EU competition cases. The adoption of the Representative Actions Directive will be a game changer as regards the magnitude of the enforcement work that can be rolled out by the BEUC network under the 2022-2025 strategy.

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Our alliances

With other consumer advocates
BEUC looks for synergies and mutual reinforcement with other consumer networks, be it in European standardisation (ANEC), in international fora (Consumers International), in testing (ICRT), or exchanging intelligence to boost transatlantic cooperation in consumers’ interests (TACD).

With other stakeholders
In our advocacy work, we systematically reach out to other representatives of consumer or societal interests, at international and at EU level. In doing so, we remain focused on our specific mission of promoting the consumer interest. We regularly cooperate with business associations, companies, trade unions, environmental organisations and other public interest organisations. We systematically reach out and co-operate with academics to maintain and develop first-class expertise and promote relevant academic consumer research. We believe such contacts and cooperation are important to promote mutual respect for different positions.

Working with donors
The ever-growing diversity of the challenges facing consumers, and the multiplication of our actions, require increased funding. BEUC has therefore developed a successful fundraising strategy, working with foundations that support our mission by providing the resources to reinforce our capacity in some areas, build evidence and back up our positions with scientific research. This enables us to strongly enhance our outreach to policy makers.

Expert staff in our Brussels secretariat
BEUC is proud to count on 50+ experienced and committed staff to coordinate its network and represent it in its daily work with the EU institutions.

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Highlights

The highlights of our priorities in the 2022-2025 period are the following:

Consumer resilience in a post-COVID economy
2022 will hopefully see the start of an economic recovery from disruption of the COVID pandemic. Consumers have faced numerous problems and challenges during the current crisis. These challenges need to be assessed, addressed and overcome, and another such crisis must be prevented. In this context, the EU needs to consider measures in many areas: upholding consumer rights in cases of force majeure, ensuring access to medicines and health technologies, and addressing the economic consequences during and after a crisis (e.g., cancellation of contracts, debt relief and advice, moratoria).

Economic sustainability of the green transition
The success of the green transition is highly dependent on a systemic transformation of consumers’ lifestyles in all sectors: food, energy, housing, transport, travel, appliances, services, financial services. If consumers are to be able to play their part in the green transition, it is crucial that sustainable options are not only easy, but also the most affordable. There is a risk that less affluent households would be disproportionately affected by price increases for some products and services, which would then lead to a lack of uptake, or even a rejection of the policy measures that are essential for climate change mitigation and adaptation to succeed. The green transition must be a just transition that combines environmental ambition with social policies.

The digital transition and consumer sovereignty
The digital transformation of our society and economy should be fair, sustainable and beneficial to consumers. They should be able to enjoy the innovations that digital technology can offer without having their rights compromised. The digital society must be characterised by a high degree of transparency, accountability, privacy, personal data protection, security, safety, sustainability, choice and protection for consumers. As human beings and economic actors, consumers should be free to choose and make up their mind about what they want to do, what services to use and which products they want to buy without being constantly watched, coerced, misled or surreptitiously manipulated.

More focus on empowering vulnerable consumers
The concept of consumer vulnerability needs to evolve from pointing at specific categories of consumers towards identifying situations where any of us could be made more vulnerable. This can be through the (ab)use of our personal data for profiling and manipulation, or through the long-term risks of climate mitigation. Policies must better consider the impact that they will have on younger generations. It is important to design consumer policy to cater for these situations of vulnerability in a resilient way, notably by providing high and efficient protection and tools for consumer empowerment. Finally, when it comes to the traditional forms of vulnerabilities, anyone who cannot or will not join the digital transition should not be left behind. There must be alternative options, now and in the future. Similarly, traditional forms of vulnerability, due to for example age, education or poverty, must be better addressed.

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Our 2022-2025 Strategies and Action Plans

The Plan to roll out our vision will be organised around two main pillars:

  • Advocacy strategy to advance the identified priorities for consumers (see our logframe for our policy priorities, in separate document);
  • Enforcement strategy;
  • Organisational development strategy (membership, capacity building, project development, network).

These pillars will be supported by the following Action Plans:

  • Communication;
  • Competition.

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