All the best for 2013, dear readers!

Dear readers,

Our blog and its publicity has grown in the past year and we are very happy because of that. We wish you now a Merry Christmas and even more interest in European consumer law next year! Follow us and with us join in the discussion of current consumer law issues.

Best wishes!

Joasia, Chantal, Candida, Bram

Driving home for Christmas?

We wrote here before about the plan of the European Commission to increase road safety for European citizens  by widening its scope (to motorcycles etc.) and toughening up the current testing regime (Better safe than sorry...). Unfortunately, yesterday the EU transport ministers agreed to weaken key elements of the Commission's proposal, effectively decreasing its relevance.

"The agreement by ministers today would substantially weaken the proposed new rules, by (a) removing motorcycles and other two-wheelers, the most vulnerable group of road users from the scope of mandatory regular testing; (b) removing proposals for increased frequency of technical checks for older vehicles – the highest risk vehicles on the road; (c) weakening proposed measures to reduce mileage manipulation. 

Ministers have backed measures with regard to two things: strengthened cross-border mutual recognition, and higher quality and harmonisation of testing, with minimum requirements on training, on equipment, on assessing deficiencies, on technical vehicle information and on supervision of testing."

The proposal will now be considered by the European Parliament.

Travelling for the sick

Travelling while sick is never pleasant, nor is it easy to take some medicines with you - taking into account, for example, airport restrictions. Yesterday, the European Commission adopted also pan-EU rules defining the minimum list of elements that need to be included in a medical prescription taken by a patient travelling from one Member State to another. These new EU provisions would enable cross-border identification of the patient, the prescriber and the prescribed product, diminishing delays, interruptions in treatment and extra costs. The plan is for the Member States to implement these rules by 25 October 2013. Currently, it is believed that over half of patients would have problems with their prescription being recognised in another Member State and only ca 2,3 million cross-border prescriptions are issued. I'm curious, however, how these new rules would work in practice since they do not prescribe the same appearance, format or language for the prescriptions. See more here.

Food for thought

The European Council pushed forward this week a new regulation that will regulate information duties (and compositional requirements) for four categories of food: infant formula and follow-on formula; processed cereal-based food and baby food for infants and young children; food for special medical purposes; total daily diet food for weight control. On the 20th of December the European Council approved an agreement reached with the European Parliament on foods considered essential for certain vulnerable persons (babies, young children). The new regulation intends to clarify existing rules both for consumers and producers. It will replace the Directive 2009/39/EC on foodstuffs intended for particular nutritional uses and change other instruments (see more here). In the legislative procedure, the European Parliament will now need to adopt it. For an example of rules it contains see below.

"Infant formula and follow-on formula are not allowed to be labelled, presented and advertised in a way that discourages breast-feeding. For the labelling of infant formula and follow-on formula pictures of infants idealising the use of these categories of food are forbidden. Idealising pictures are also proscribed for the presentation and advertising of infant formula.

Foods for sportsmen, milk-based drinks and similar products  marketed as "growing up milks" are excluded from the scope of the new rules. The Commission must, however, report on the necessity of rules for these products after having consulted the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)."

Smokers beware

On the 19th of December the European Commission adopted also its proposal of the Tobacco Products Directive's amendment. The rules on tobacco products' manufacturing, presentation and trade will be strengthened. Among other, it would prohibit the use of cigarettes, roll-you-own tobacco and smokeless tobacco products with characterising flavours. Additionally, it makes it mandatory to use large pictorial health warnings on cigarettes and RYO and regulates cross-border online sales. It would also begin to regulate products like e-cigarettes and herbal products for smoking. The ban on snus (oral tobacco) will be maintained. Chewing and nasal tobacco would be covered by specific labelling and ingredient regulations. More on the revision project may be found here.

Flying without snakes on board

Do you like watching movies like Snakes on a Plane or Air Force One? Well, the EU wants to limit airplanes' accidents to fictional only. On the 19th of December the European Commission proposed new rules to prevent aircraft accidents. The proposal aims to increase and improve the use of data on occurrences as well as improve the flow of information between the Member States, switching the focus from reaction to prevention. "An occurrence is any type of event significant in the context of aviation safety which might or might not have resulted in an actual accident but which merits being collected and analysed." The text of the proposal will now be discussed by the Parliament and the Council.

Investigation into Google continued

This was a busy week for everyone - trying to finish all work issues before Christmas and then starting to prepare for the holiday season, too. The European institutions were busy, too, so let us try to catch up (further) on some of the news regarding European consumer law. 

 On the 18th of December, VP of the European Commission, Joaquin Almunia, announced that he intends to continue to try and reach an agreement with Google, regarding the antitrust behaviour of the latter. As you may recall, BEUC called for effective remedies to be agreed on between the parties (Manipulating online search results). The concerns of the European Commission relate to: 

" - the way in which Google's vertical search services are displayed within general search results as compared to services of competitors; 

 - the way Google may use and display third party content on its vertical search services; 

 - exclusivity agreements for the delivery of Google search advertisements on other websites; and 

 - restrictions in the portability of AdWords advertising campaigns." 

 A detailed commitment text is to be expected from Google in January 2013.

Digital Consumers and the Law

A nice thing about the week before the holidays is that usually a lot of packages arrive. The one I just opened contained a new book on 'Digital Consumers and the Law', resulting from a joint project of the Amsterdam Institute for Information Law (IViR) and the Centre for the Study of European Contract Law (CSECL).

The book deals with the following topics: 

Chapter 1 Digital Content Markets for Consumers: Characteristics, Challenges, and Legal Context.

Chapter 2 Classifying Digital Content: Good, Service or Else?. 

Chapter 3 Somewhere between ‘B’ and ‘C’: The Legal Status of the ‘Prosumer’ in European Consumer Laws. 

Chapter 4 Pre-contractual Information Requirements for Digital Content.  

Chapter 5 Conformity and Non-conformity of Digital Content. 

Chapter 6 Educating the Regulator: A More Mature Approach Towards the Underage Consumer.

Chapter 7 Fundamental Rights and Digital Content Contracts.  

Chapter 8 Money Does Not Grow on Trees, It Grows on People: Towards a Model of Privacy as Virtue.  

Chapter 9 Conclusions.

Please refer to the publisher's website for more information.

Lawyers buying into CESL's process

Finally, here is a link to Commissioner Reding's most recent speech on the proposal for a Common European Sales Law, given at the occasion of a debate organised by the Council of Bars and Law Societies of Europe (CCBE) for the purpose of 'buying into the process'. On the point of interpretation of the CESL, which is as important for consumers as it is for professional users of the instrument, Reding observed:

'I also envisage a database that enables courts to draw on existing case-law from all Member States. This database - accessible to everybody, but in particular to all legal practitioners, would ensure transparency and a de-facto convergence of relevant case-law. The database would contain national rulings applying Common European Sales Law provisions as well as translated summaries. This would ensure the consistency of application. In time, this database would also remove the necessity for judges to investigate foreign law and compare several laws. This in turn will help to lower litigation costs and shorten the length of proceedings. 

With this in mind, it is reasonable to expect that the vast majority of issues would be resolved by Member States' courts without problematic inconsistencies. And that only a small number of questions would have to be taken to the Court of Justice in Luxembourg. We should also bear in mind that the Common European Sales Law builds on the biggest common denominator of contract law traditions in Member States. Even though the details are new, it would be a rare occurrence that the concepts and approaches underlying the instrument are alien to the courts that will have to apply them. This will limit the risk of fundamentally differing interpretations.

To support us on this journey we also have excellent work by way of commentaries like that edited by Professor Schulze. I thank you for your tremendous efforts in producing this commentary - which can be seen as a very helpful tool in showing others how the Common European Sales Law will work. 

This is only one tool but nevertheless an important pre-cursor of what is taking place: There will be many others including – as mentioned in your position paper – comments which explain the Common European Sales Law article by article as well as suggestions for a digest to be created linking different court cases to each other.'

To be continued...

How much time did you spend on the internet today?

Fourthly, some interesting facts and figures on internet use were published by the EU's statistical office Eurostat. Although the level of internet access has increased Europe-wide, significant differences in use remain among Member States. While e-mailing and searching for information on goods and services are still at the top of the list of online activities, it seems that a majority of internet users is also more often reading the news online, posting to social media, internet banking and consulting travel services. 

Creating websites and blogging are less common initiatives. Since we are in the blogosphere now, I cannot help but notice the following: 'The Netherlands (17%) and Hungary (16%) recorded a proportion of internet users who created websites and blogs in 2012 that was almost double the EU27 average.'

The full overview of data is available here.