Consumers set for key role in fair trade forum

Date: 04/09/1997

By Leyla Linton

CONSUMERS look set to be given a greater role in assessing the fairness of national restrictions on cross-border advertising and marketing in response to pressure from MEPs.

As the European Commission hones its follow-up document to the Green Paper on eliminating barriers to commercial communications in the single market, officials say it is ready to take on board demands made by the European Parliament.

The Commission suggested originally that a committee of member state representatives should play a key role in advising on the 'proportionality' of national laws which restrict cross-border promotions.

This committee would be charged with assessing whether restrictions such as those imposed on toy advertisements in Greece were proportionate to their aims - in this case, the protection of children - or, in fact, amounted to a protectionist barrier to trade.

But MEPs have called for a tripartite committee giving equal weight to consumer and advertising industry representatives as well as national governments.

A Commission official said the MEPs' case was reasonable and that the make-up of the committee would be reconsidered. But he warned that national governments might be opposed to the idea.

“The question is: will the member states be willing to discuss things in an open forum? Time will tell. What we want is something which will work,” he said.

Commission officials are less enthusiastic about MEPs' calls for a list to be drawn up of existing barriers to the free circulation of commercial communication services, insisting that the Green Paper had already given a good account of the problems.

They say the Commission will try to be as “exhaustive as possible” in its follow-up, but the number of barriers is infinite. “We will come across more and more of them. This a dynamic process,” said one official.

Valerie Thompson, of European consumer organisation BEUC, welcomed much of the MEPs' resolution.

“They do talk about consumer protection and there is much in there that is good,” she said.

But Thompson expressed concern that the Parliament had voted in favour of the 'country of origin' principle. This means that cross-border commercial communications are mainly subject to the laws of the member state they come from rather than the country of destination.

“The problem is that you end up with the lowest common denominator,” she said.

However, the Commission and European advertisers are delighted that the 'country of origin' principle was supported by MEPs.

“The advertising sector has always considered principles like the country of origin as absolutely crucial to free trade, along with transparency, proportionality and self-regulation,” said a spokesman for the European Advertising Tripartite.