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. 

9th Consumer Conditions Scoreboard

On 23 July the European Commission published recent results of 2013 Consumer Conditions Scoreboard (Consumer Scoreboard: more action needed for a true single market for consumers). Pursuant to the new data 35% of EU citizens declared they were confident buying online from sellers in other EU countries. Unfortunately, still 7 out of 10 EU consumers do not know what to do if they receive products they did not order, and less than a third of traders is familiar with the law provisions with regards to returning defective goods for repair. The observed trend is an actual decrease in consumer trust, which seems to be matched by an increase in the use of redress measures. In the press release you may read about various measures that the Commission thinks about adopting in order to increase consumer protection and their confidence in cross-border transactions. One thing that caught my attention was an announcement of a study on guarantees in selected consumer markets to check compliance of national laws with the EU measures. Another interesting point was a remark on environmental impact of a good on consumers' purchasing decisions - 4 out of 10 consumers take that under consideration, which seems quite a significant number. Consumers who don't take green transactional decisions explain it by not wanting to pay a higher price, not having relevant information on the product or not trusting environmental claims made.

8th consumer scoreboard

What markets are working better for EU citizens? And where is there, to put it nicely, larger room for improvement?

Some answers can be found in the latest Consumers Market Scoreboard, which measures consumers overall appreciation of the markets along seven parameters (‘comparability’, ‘trust’, ‘satisfaction’, ‘choice’ and ‘ease of switching’, plus ‘problems’ and ‘complaints’).
In general, it seems that European consumers find themselves relatively at ease within markets for goods- with the notable but unsurprising exception of second-hand cars...

On the other hand, services markets in general seem to cause more troubles. In particular, at the bottom of the chart lay banking sand telecom services, which perform poorly on several parameters.

European consumers seem also to be at strains with energy markets when it comes to important aspects such as choice, comparability and switching suppliers and tariffs.

Finally, the most remarkable decreases in performance seem to have been taken place in the transport and post-delivery markets as an effect of the crisis. The latter has led governments to curb public subsidies to those sectors. 

Another interesting remark is to be found in the Commission's press release: apparently, "[m]arkets are assessed differently by different socio-demographic groups." Further research with the aim of clarifying the reasons for that is promised (and vividly looked forward to by this author).

7th Consumer Scoreboard

Today the European Commission published the results of the 7th Consumer Scoreboard, a monitoring tool addressing the position of the consumer on the European market. The tool is published twice a year: a spring edition on "consumer conditions", examining progress in the integration of the EU retail market from the consumers' perspective, and an autumn edition on "consumer markets", dealing with the different specific consumer markets in order to identify which of these markets may be malfunctioning. The consumer conditions scoreboard published today deals with issues such as quality of regulation, effectiveness of dispute resolution and consumers' trust in market actors, including enforcement authorities and consumer associations. The Consumer Conditions Index has slightly risen compared to previous years. This is partly caused by a higher complaint ratio and growing satisfaction about dispute resolution. At the same time, consumers are becoming more worried about unfair commercial practices and about product safety. For more information, including the index for each Member State, click here.

Statistically relevant

Statistics play a big role in designing consumer policy. As the EU Commissioner Šemeta mentioned:

"Statistics not only pin-point where the weaknesses lie in our economic (and social) systems, but they provide the basis for finding the right solutions to address them." (Commissioner Šemeta presents the "revised Regulation on European Statistics")

The new proposal for changes in the Regulation on European Statistics (223/2009) of 11 March 2009 aims at increasing the independence of gathered statistics and assures high quality thereof (Commission strengthens independence and reliability of EU statistics). It determines criteria for the selection of heads of National Statistical Institutes and Eurostat, as well as clarifies their accountability. The proposal will require Member States to sign "Commitments of Confidence", pledging to respect the European Statistics Code of Practice, to safeguard the independence of NSIs and to establish national quality assurance frameworks for statistics.

EU households still in the financial crisis

The European Commission published some new surveys results as to EU citizens dealing with the financial crisis and its effects on both the employment market and household expenses (Employment and Social Situation Quarterly Review). In general, it is estimated that since 2008 the level of financial distress in EU households remains more or less the same, despite a moderate improvement over recent months. The slight improvement manifests itself by a fewer number of households reporting that they are running into debt. Not surprisingly, the lingering effects of the financial crisis influence more the households with lower income. Additionally, there is a difference across Member States with consumers in Germany and Sweden reporting improvement of their situations and households in Greece, Spain and Romania - deterioration of their finances.

On the effects of the financial crisis on the labour market and child poverty see this quarterly review.

Any thoughts on the internal market?

If you are interested in sharing them, finding out what others think and getting some answers from the European Commission as to any doubts that you might have about the internal market... tune in to Facebook!

On Wednesday, the 26th of October, 15.00-16.00, on the European Commission's Facebook page a chat is organized on this subject. Main findings from a market research about opinions on the internal market may be found in the video below.

What's the score? - Consumer Markets Scoreboard Autumn 2011

The 6th Consumer Markets Scoreboard is now available on the website of the European Commission, DG Health and Consumers. The Scoreboard is meant to help the Commission 'identify potentially underperforming sectors in the single market from the consumers' perspective' and ranks '51 consumer markets, covering more than 60% of household budgets, in terms of consumer trust, satisfaction, the ease of switching and comparing offers, problems and complaints, choice and prices' (see the Q&A press release for more details on the Scoreboard's functions and this year's main results).

Market sectors that, according to the new Scoreboard, remain problematic from the consumers' point of view are (not surprisingly..) those concerning financial services: 'Consumers are most satisfied with "books, magazines and newspapers", "personal care services" and "glasses and lenses". The lowest satisfaction scores are assigned to "investments, pensions, securities", "mortgages" and "real estate services". "Train services" obtain the highest percentage of consumers giving a very poor score (16 %)' (p. 15 of the report).

Further action that will be taken on the basis of these results includes the launch of two in-depth market studies, one on consumer credit, the other on fuels. For those interested in the facts and figures presented on the Scoreboard, detailed breakdowns on different aspects of the data can be found on the related Consumer Market Monitoring Dashboard.