The European Commission proposals published today to reform the EU’s medicines and pharmaceutical legislation are a good step in the right direction by moving the EU into a more active role to address numerous market failures. However, set against a backdrop of fairly widespread medicine shortages and increasing pressure on state budgets to reimburse people’s medicines, these proposals will have to go further to resolve the problems.

Consumers could be exposing themselves to food-related risks, as they experience a lack of safe use instructions for food containers and kitchenware. Many continue to use worn or damaged food containers and kitchenware for some time, as an 11-country survey about people’s attitudes, needs, and concerns regarding ‘food contact materials’ [A] underlines. As a result, BEUC is calling for proper regulation of these materials.

Following a complaint by BEUC and its members against Nintendo for premature obsolescence, the company has committed to lifelong free repairs of Nintendo Switch game consoles suffering from ‘Joy Con Drift’.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) is calling for EU and national authorities to launch an investigation into ChatGPT and similar chatbots, following the filing of a complaint by US-based civil society group CAIDP [1] with the US Federal Trade Commission against ChatGPT-4 today.