Getting the fair trade show on the road

Date: 10/10/02

By Karen Carstens

Commissioner David Byrne wants to turn his consumer vision for the EU into a reality - and fast.

DAVID Byrne is in an irresistibly upbeat mood. Sitting on the edge of an electric-blue sofa in his office on Brussels' Rue Breydel, the former Irish attorney-general makes no attempt to conceal his satisfaction at the overwhelmingly positive feedback he has received on his Green Paper proposal to promote fair trading.

'We got a very good response,' Byrne says of the consultation process with member states, business groups and consumers, which has just come to a close.

But time is running out for the health and consumer protection commissioner to turn his vision of a sweeping, user-friendly EU-wide consumer policy into reality, as he freely admits.

'I'm conscious that my mandate is expiring in two-and-a-half years time and sometimes it takes two years to get legislation through the system, and I'd like to have that there before I leave,' he says.

'I have an ambition to get this show on the road as fast as possible.'

The largely positive vibe has set the stage for his next step: drafting a new directive that will lay down clear codes of conduct to provide a level playing field for business, while enhancing the confidence of consumers at a time when the euro and e-commerce make cross-border shopping more of an option than ever.

Byrne hopes to present the findings of his consultation process to a competitiveness Council gathering of EU industry and consumer ministers by November or December at the latest.

'This is a fairly dramatic proposal,' he says, citing the broad nature of a regulation that would transform the EU's consumer policy landscape en masse, instead of in dribs and drabs as Brussels has done in the past.

The fair trading Green Paper, published in November 2001, laid down two options for a new type of consumer policy. One was a kind of piecemeal approach, along the lines of the country-of-origin principle, that would work with existing laws in the 15 member states. The second envisaged a new framework directive on fair trading practices.

Of the 169 respondents in an initial round of consultations held last winter, the vast majority backed the second approach, thereby paving the way for Byrne's goal of harmonising national rules on business-to-consumer, or 'B2C', commercial practices.

'When I first came to the Commission (in autumn 1999),' says Byrne, 'I quickly realised that a lot of the legislation we have in place is sector-by-sector. I felt that we needed something more comprehensive, more wide-ranging.'

Besides a general clause requiring fair trading, this new legislation would feature specific rules against unfair trading practices ranging from misleading advertising to poor after-sales service.

But, as Byrne is eager to point out, the Commission is keen on lighter, not heavier, controls through the use of self-regulatory codes within an overarching legislative framework that would make the work of courts a lot easier when they are pursuing consumer complaints and penalising rogue traders.

And there is no shortage of rogues out there. According to the UK's National Consumer Council and its Office of Fair Trading, 'cowboys' are costing consumers the equivalent of €15 billion a year. And that's just one member state.

Still, Byrne concedes that some of the respondents to the proposed fair trading directive, such as national advertisers' associations, were sceptical at first. 'That's understandable and legitimate,' he says, but the commissioner believes he is winning the argument. 'I think they are beginning now to see the motivation is to bring about a kind of overall, across-the-board, level playing field in the form of light regulation that they have an input into,' he says, spreading his arms wide.

And it can be done, he adds. Last year, for example, Byrne and his staff set up a stakeholders' group to draw up codes of conduct in support of trust marks on commercial websites.

'We put this group together representing industry of all types and consumer groups and they worked on this for a year. After that the main business representative body, UNICE, and the main consumers group, BEUC, got together and they drafted up line by line what the appropriate codes of conduct should be to support trust marks.

'The point,' he says with more than a hint of enthusiasm, 'is that our vision of what is to be done has been done.

'Now we want to extend that into fair trading in a completely open and transparent way so everybody has their say, everybody's at the table,' he says.

'And in fact they can draft these documents themselves, but once they've signed up to them, they must comply.

'And I say what can be more transparent and consensual than that?' he beams. 'There's nothing there to be afraid of.'

Interview with European Commissioner responsible for Health and Consumer Protection, David Byrne.