Bolkestein under fire for adverts U-turn

Date: 07/06/01

By Peter Chapman

LEADING MEPs and industry groups are accusing single market chief Frits Bolkestein of turning his back on the myriad national barriers that riddle the EU's advertising sector.

The warning comes as Consumer Affairs Commissioner David Byrne prepares to unveil his own vision later this month for a Union-wide fair trade law covering marketing and advertising practices.

If left unchallenged, critics such as Belgian liberal MEP Ward Beysen, chairman of the European Parliament's all-party inter-group on 'commercial communications', say it would strike a blow to the single market for the sector.

That is because it would allow member states to interpret what was or was not 'fair' - letting them keep in place domestic rules that hamper cross-border campaigns.

But they complain that Bolkestein has given Byrne an open goal by blocking key efforts by his own department to get rid of such barriers and take any of the EU's 15 member states to task in the courts.

Beysen said: "The commercial communications policy seems to be blocked. I am very concerned that the Green Paper on fair trade is going to be some sort of a substitute ... and I strongly oppose such as move."

Bolkestein's opponents point to three key points of tension which they suggest he does not care about applying Union free movement rules in the advertising sector - although he portrays an image of himself as a single market 'cop' out to bust errant member states.

The first is the failure to formally refer Germany to the European Court of Justice over its controversial ban on two-for-the-price-of-one offers.

The second is the lack of movement in talks started a year ago with France over its controversial Loi Evin which restricts broadcasts of sports events that carry pitchside advertising for alcohol. The law has been used illegally to stop drinks companies from advertising their products at sports events, for example a soccer match in England that would have been re-broadcast into France.

FInally, they say, Bolkestein has blocked a draft proposal from his own department to tackle national barriers in sales promotion - effectively consigning three years of effort by a special group of EU national experts to the scrapheap.

This proposal, which is part of the Commission's published work programme for 2001, would have called on member states, such as Germany, to agree to get rid of barriers against discount and sales promotion techniques. In their place would be EU-wide transparency rules that would make it easy for consumers to compare offers.

Experts say Bolkestein is reluctant to take action in the field because he prefers letting member states make their own decisions in the sensitive advertising and marketing sectors.

But Andrew Brown, director-general of the UK's Advertising Association, says the industry's patience is wearing thin and that firms are about to launch an assault on government, MEPs and officials to get the message across before Byrne's plan takes hold. "We have to unite to see what pressure we can bring. One does not want to make it into a political crisis but there seems to be some kind of paralysis," he said.

Leading MEPs and industry groups are accusing single market chief Frits Bolkestein of turning his back on the myriad national barriers that riddle the EU's advertising sector.