Memo: EU Consumer MarketWatch. Questions & Answers

Consumer MarketWatch is a new EU instrument to investigate markets from a consumer perspective to assess if they are functioning effectively for consumers – or if further investigative or corrective actions are necessary.

The MarketWatch process will analyse the Single Market in 3 dimensions:

(1) Sectoral Consumer Investigations: MarketWatch puts in place a new process to launch sectoral consumer investigations - screening the broad performance of markets across the economy against a range of indicators (price, complaints, switching, safety, satisfaction) from a consumer perspective and then identifying problem sectors for in-depth investigation. It also puts in place two important benchmarking exercises which can also trigger follow up actions.
(2) Benchmarking EU-wide Retail Market Integration: To monitor performance across the EU in terms of the degree of integration of the retail internal market using data on cross border trade,
(3) Benchmarking the national consumer environment: To monitor the environment in 27 national markets in terms of enforcement, information, education and redress.

At the heart of the process is the annual Consumer Markets Scoreboard published each year. This is the first critical step in the MarketWatch process – it screens all three dimensions of the market against a range of key indicators (see below). On the basis of the scoreboard screening a range of follow up actions could be envisaged.