Website: Statistics: Household budget surveys

The Household Budget Survey (HBS) describes the expenditure structure of different types of households. This information is mainly used at EU level in the context of Consumer Protection Policy. In fact, the information gathered from the HBS, together with a contribution regarding prices (Harmonised Indices of Consumer prices), are used to develop a Consumer Markets Scoreboard. It investigates how markets in various sectors of the economy perform from a consumers' perspective.

Five key indicators are taken into account, mainly:
- Prices
- Complaints
- Switching rates
- Satisfaction
- Safety

Patterns which could indicate whether the consumer is losing out in any market may trigger a more focused and in depth analysis, possibly leading to corrective actions. The far reaching new process also benchmarks the strength of the consumer environment in different Member States and the degree of integration of the retail internal market.

The first screening results underscore the lack of comprehensive, EU wide comparable consumer data on key areas. In view of this collection and collation of this data is one of the priorities for consumer policy.