Internal Policies: The Commission Defends the EU Consumer

Abstract

2007 witnessed several examples of the European Commission invoking the defence of consumer rights in its single market policy proposals and competition policy decisions. The Commission placed emphasis on other themes – business friendly ‘better’ regulation, competitiveness, innovation and helping smalland medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). A consumeroriented discourse, however, took centre stage in the Single Market Review and was the leading element in the Commission’s justification for a range of single market and competition policy decisions throughout the year. Several observers have argued that consumer interests have traditionally been poorly represented in European Union (EU) policy-making (Grant, 1993; Greenwood, 2003) and that neither the EU nor any of the EU Member States has the kind of consumer lobby or consumer advocates that exist in the US. Nonetheless, the presence and influence of the consumer lobby and interests has increased over the past decade (Young and Wallace, 2000; Greenwood, 2003). Moreover, since the 1990s, the Commission has placed increasing emphasis on consumer interests in its strategy and discourse on single market and competition policies. Multi-annual consumer policy action plans have a two-decade history and consumer policy was officially mainstreamed through the 1997 Amsterdam Treaty (Article 153). In its 2001 report on the ‘Action Plan for Consumer Policy 1999–2001’, however, the Commission accepted that efforts in consumer policy were ad JCMS 2008 Volume 46 Annual Review pp. 91–107