New Report on the Rapid Alert System

On 12^th March, the 2017 Report on the Rapid alert system for dangerous food products was published. The first structure for exchange of information between Member States on dangerous products was set up in 2003, and became fully operational in 2004. Its legislative basis is art.10 of the General Product Directive.

The role of the Rapid alert system is to enhance cooperation between national authorities and assist Member States in fulfilling their obligation to ensure that only safe products are placed in the market.

The latest report illuminates the latest trends in product safety. The most notified type of product has been toys with 29%, closely followed by motor vehicles at 20%. The most notified risks are injuries with 28% and chemical with 22%, while injuries are also the category with the most follow-up actions.

The Member States are required to take follow-up action following the alerts, which is set out in the website. Follow-up in this instance refers to feedback received from the countries as to how they treated the alert, with the most common follow-up action being that of finding the product. There is no formal coordination mechanism in the case where national authorities assess a threat differently. Instead the Commission is meant to act as a mediator. Divergent approaches in product safety, such as a product being identified as dangerous in a Member State but not in another, may be better addressed by a formalised system to resolve such disputes. 

Transparency is a key element to the Rapid alert system as the alerts and the subsequent measures taken by the national authorities are set out in the website. This allows consumers to follow developments and be able to find out whether an unsafe product has been found in their country. The Report points out the different parts of the alert website that are designed to be used also by consumers, such as a layman explanation of the alert system as well as the possibility to subscribe to alerts and even personalise them. Yet, what remains unclear is to what extent consumers are aware of and interested in making use of the Rapid alert website, as the Report does not specify that. It would be interesting to see which groups of consumers are more likely to make use of the website and the services offered. Since toys are the most notified products, perhaps parents of young children are more likely to make use of the alerts.

The Report also notes the most important challenges in the field of product safety for the past year. It notes how the Rapid alert system has allowed the exchange of information on fidget spinners which presented a choking hazard to children, so that dangerous products would be removed from the market or stopped at the borders.

Yet the greatest challenge is that presented by the growing popularity of online shopping. The Member States need to devote a large amount of resources in order to monitor online markets. Yet the actions adopted on an EU level are limited to soft law interventions, such as informational campaigns and cooperation with online retailers for them to take voluntary commitments. As the popularity of online shopping is growing and EU consumers are getting further exposed to products from all over the world which may not adhere to EU standards, it may be time to consider new interventions in the field, as well as further strengthening international cooperation.

Monitoring the application of EU law - EC 2015 Annual Report

ec.europa.eu

The European Commission has published its 33rd Annual Report on monitoring the application of EU law (click here for the full report; see the press release here). The Commission, as "guardian of the Treaties", monitors the Member States' measures for the implementation and application of EU law to ensure that they comply with EU law. This Annual Report highlights the main developments in enforcement policy in 2015, and gives some facts and figures. 

As regards the acquis on consumer protection, the Commission reports that it has raised the implications of the Court of Justice's case law based on the principles of ex officio control by national courts, equivalence and effectiveness with individual Member States, in 'EU Pilot dialogues for non-compliance' and in infringement procedures (pp. 7-8). These mainly concerned the transposition of the Directive on alternative dispute resolution (see also p. 15) and the Consumer Rights Directive. In its press release, the Commission proudly refers to the online Single Market Scoreboard, which monitors the performance per Member State in a number of policy areas and governance tools. Taking all evaluated areas into account, Croatia, Cyprus, Estonia, Ireland and Slovakia performed best in 2015. 

In addition, the Annual Report mentions that the Commission received less complaints about potential breaches of EU law than in 2014 (p. 17). The three Member States against which the most complaints were filed were Italy, Spain and Germany. Many of those complaints were related to justice and consumers (p. 18). On its website, the Commission has published - among other things - National Factsheets for all Member States, containing graphs per country on EU Pilot files and infringement cases. These factsheet also refer to some key preliminary rulings of the Court of Justice per country. For example, for Spain, the Court's BBVA judgment of 29 October 2015 (reported by us here) is briefly summarised. 

CJEU Annual Report 2015 presented

The Annual Report 2015 on the judicial activity of the Court of Justice, the General Court and the Civil Service Tribunal has been published online. In the Netherlands, it was presented last week - on 27 May 2016 - at the Council of State in The Hague by justices Sacha Prechal and Marc van der Woude (Dutch version available here). 

In his introduction to the Annual Report, justice Koen Lenaerts, president of the Court of Justice, observes that 2015 has seen the highest number of cases brought over the course of a year in the institution’s history, and that its annual productivity is at an unprecedented level. Earlier, it was reported that the most references for a preliminary ruling come from (1) Germany, (2) Italy, (3) the Netherlands, (4) Spain and (5) Belgium. 

From the Annual Report it follows that there were 39 new references for a preliminary ruling with consumer protection as the subject matter of the action (on a total of 436) before the Court of Justice in 2015. Furthermore, 29 cases concerning consumer protection were completed by judgments, opinions or by orders involving a judicial determination (on a total of 554). Section XVIII of the report (pp. 59-60) is dedicated to consumer protection, and discusses the Court's judgments in the cases Unicaja Banco and Caixabank (see also our blog) and ERSTE Bank Hungary (blog). Both cases relate to Directive 93/13 on unfair terms. 

Reporting on fundamental rights and gender equality

Today, the European Commission published its 4th annual report on the application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights, together with a report on progress in equality between women and men. Summaries of the two reports can be found in the Commission's press releases on fundamental rights and equality in 2013 and a Q&A page. DG Justice's newsroom offers links to the reports as well as staff working documents accompanying them.

Consumer rights are mostly dealt with under the heading of 'solidarity'. The Commission highlights the process of implementation of the Consumer Rights Directive and its legislative initiatives on alternative and online dispute resolution (ADR and ODR) - see, in particular, the staff working document accompanying the report on the Charter, pages 15 and 27-29.

Chartering European consumer law

The European Commission recently published its annual report on the application of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights in 2012. The report contains a considerable number of references to consumer protection, notably on the topics of digital content and cloud computing services (consumer information and data protection), health care (the CJEU's judgment in Deutsches Weintor), the enforcement of existing consumer protection Directives (timeshare, consumer sales, misleading commercial practices) and effective remedies (Art. 47 of the Charter).

More facts and figures are available on the Commission's DG Justice's website.

The application of the Charter to cases that are considered to be of a private legal nature under the laws of the Member States, furthermore, raises some interesting questions. For a discussion of some of those, I refer to a recent paper by Dorota Leczykiewicz (Horizontal effect of fundamental rights) and one of my own working papers (Unchart(er)ed territory: EU fundamental rights and national private law).

Making fundamental rights reality

Today, the European Commission presented its second annual report on the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the EU, which has now been legally binding for over two years. The report is meant to raise people's awareness of the Charter, when it applies, and the role of EU institutions in the field of fundamental rights.

In the field of consumer law, the report makes mention of some important judgments of the European Court of Justice: 'In March 2011, the Court ruled in the Test-Achats case that different premiums for men and women constitute sex discrimination (MEMO/11/123) and, in November 2011, that ordering an internet service provider to install a filtering system to prevent an infringement of intellectual property rights would infringe customers' rights to receive and send information (Scarlet v. SABAM case).'

More information can be found in the Commission's press release and on DG Justice's website.