Monti to consult the public over EU’s faulty goods law

Date: 22/07/1999

By Peter Chapman

ACTING Single Market Commissioner Mario Monti will launch a public consultation exercise next week on whether changes are needed to existing EU legislation governing the rights of consumers seeking redress for damage caused by defective products.

The current rules, launched in 1985, introduced an EU-wide system of liability without fault. This means that producers are liable for any harm caused by a defect in their product if the victim provides evidence of the damage and its relationship with the defect.

A spokeswoman for Monti said the Commission would await the results of the consultation exercise before deciding whether there was any need for changes to the legislation, which was extended last year to include certain agricultural products.

"We want to see how the directive is working, to ask whether the balance is right and to look at its impact on both consumer interests and competitiveness," she said. "We want to know if it is effective in discouraging the marketing of dangerous products and if it gives legal certainty."

The move, which will be one of Monti's final acts in charge of the single market portfolio before he takes over the competition dossier in the autumn, will feed into a full-scale review of the rules due before the end of next year.

However, the European consumer group BEUC is warning the Commission not to rely solely on the results of its consultations, which are likely to be dominated by the views of powerful industry lobbies opposed to extending consumers' rights.

"We are concerned that the Commission does not plan to launch any independent studies into the workings of the directive. That is problematic," said legal affairs expert Ursula Pachl.

She added that BEUC would urge the Commission to close a loophole in the directive which allow firms to use a 'development risk defence' to escape claims for damages.

Under this rule, firms can argue that they took into account all the apparent risks at the time the product was launched, and that they could not have foreseen future risks which had led to the damage.