Verbatim report of proceedings

Thursday, 16 March 2006 - Strasbourg

6. Community action programme in the field of consumer protection (2007-2013) (debate)

  President. – The next item is the report (A6-0032/2006) by Mrs Thyssen, on behalf of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, on the proposal for a decision of the European Parliament and of the Council establishing a programme of Community action in the field of health and consumer protection (2007–2013 – consumer aspects (COM(2005) 0115 – C6-0225/2005 – 2005/0042B(COD)).

Before handing over to the Commissioner, you may be aware, ladies and gentlemen, that we have only about 20 minutes left for the debate before Voting time. You will realise that, under these circumstances, we shall not be able to finish the debate. I prefer to tell you that straight away. I shall be obliged to suspend the debate.

  Markos Kyprianou, Member of the Commission. Mr President, first of all I would like to thank the rapporteur, Mrs Thyssen, and the Members of Parliament and the members of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection for their excellent and close cooperation and the support they have expressed for the consumer programme.

I would like to apologise in advance for repeating some things I have already said regarding the health part of the programme. However, given that we are having separate debates, it is important to make some statements again in relation to the consumer programme.

The problem of the budget is again a similar one: a reduced budget means reduced policies and, again, it means less money for the Union of 27 – 25 plus 2 – than we had for the 15.

In the age of consumer protection, where we have to take strong initiatives, especially in the new Member States and the acceding Member States, this will cause serious problems and will of course affect the assistance we offer to consumer organisations, especially as regards funding of projects and training of staff.

On the same issue, I would like to remind you again of the letter sent by President Barroso to President Borrell raising these concerns, explaining that if the compromise stays in place it would mean less money than we had in 2006 and asking for additional efforts in this area. Again, as in the health area, if eventually we are left with such a major cut or reduction in our funding, it will mean that we cannot spread it thinly over many actions. Limited funds mean we have to re-evaluate and prioritise and decide where we actually want to concentrate, where we can achieve the greatest benefit. I hope that this can be corrected, that eventually the funding will be provided and that we will be able to cover the programme as it was proposed.

On splitting the programmes, I have to repeat that I fully understand the position of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection in this respect. I understand why it would prefer to have two separate programmes. As I said earlier, we believe that there would be some added value if we adhered to a merged programme, where we clearly distinguish between actions in health and in consumer protection; but we can benefit from having common areas and achieve better economies of scale.

Nevertheless, given that the financial perspectives negotiations are still ongoing, this would and will affect the Commission’s position on the splitting of the programme. At this point, therefore, we cannot take a final decision regarding splitting and have to reject the amendments relating to splitting. On the conclusion of the debate on the financial perspectives, the Commission will review this issue again. I repeat that Parliament has made its wishes very clear and I have taken note of the very strong – almost unanimous – position of Parliament.

I shall not comment on the amendments separately. A full list of the Commission’s position on each of the amendments is being made available to Parliament and I should be obliged if it could be included in the Verbatim Report of this sitting⁽¹⁾.

The amendments we are rejecting relate mostly to the splitting, and we are doing so either for the reason I explained earlier or because they go beyond the scope of Community consumer policy. It is not that we disagree with the substance of these proposals, but that we feel they go a bit further than the scope of Community consumer policy and – given the existing situation – we would not be able to finance some of them.

We agree on the other issues, especially as regards the need to integrate consumer interests into other policies. I count on Parliament’s support to ensure that consumer interests are given proper attention in many other key consumer policy initiatives.

That is a brief overview of the Commission’s position on this issue. I look forward to a very interesting debate.

  Marianne Thyssen (PPE-DE), rapporteur. – (NL) Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, as rapporteur of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, I should like to confirm explicitly what was, in actual fact, already obvious from the previous debate. The Committee is opposed to an integrated public health and consumer protection programme, and with the backing of the Conference of Presidents, we are asking for a separate multi-annual programme for consumer protection. Since the Commissioner does not strike me as entirely convinced, here are the reasons again in a nutshell.

The Community competences in each of these two areas are too dissimilar from one another. This is also true of the social objectives of the civil-society organisations involved; internal distribution of competences, also in the Member States, is often at odds with an integrated approach. A patient is slightly different from a consumer and at the very least, we would like certainty in relation to the proportion of the budget that is available for consumer affairs and we want to prevent a situation, when we are faced with a public health crisis, where consumer policy would be the budgetary victim of an urgent public health need which should normally be resolved by means of a flexibility instrument.

If the truth be known, I feel, given the lack of financial perspectives, a little uneasy talking about this report today, because we have no idea as to the level of budget. At the same time, I am acutely aware that the extent of the budget and the fleshing out of the programme in terms of content are two sides of the same coin. It is difficult, though, to restrain our ambitions in the area of consumer policy. For years, all European institutions have used Community consumer policy to illustrate that Europe is very much concerned about the care of normal people. In times of enlargement, when the need to give the internal market a consumer dimension is greater than ever, when we also need to let the European Union keep its human face, in times like these, we cannot curb the ambitions in the area of consumer protection without this having any repercussions.

Since the three institutions are present today – and I assume that the Austrian Presidency is adequately represented – it is for that reason alone that I consider it useful today to argue in favour of keeping the budget as specified in the Commission proposal. I think we should really stick to it.

In consultation with Mr Trakatellis of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, we have carefully carved up the budget according to the scale of apportionment used by the Commission. Accordingly, for consumer protection, we arrive at a sum of EUR 233 million spread over seven years. In agreement with our financial perspectives negotiator, Mr Böge, we did not add anything in IMCO, but let us not misunderstand each other: this does not mean in any way that we will be satisfied with less at a later stage. The three budgetary authorities are asked to take this message literally. We are not satisfied with less, given the importance of the subject matter, the increased sphere of action resulting from enlargement, and the consumer’s vital confidence in the internal market.

I should like to thank my colleagues on the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, because they are right behind us on this, and also because we managed to confine ourselves to two major additional areas of concern at the Commission’s proposal which, incidentally, the Commissioner did an extremely good job of explaining.

1. We want the proramming procedure to be more open to involving the Member States that do not have a long tradition of consumer protection, consumer movement, the capacity development of consumer associations and their participation in policy preparation.

2. Special attention should go to the phenomenon of ageing among the population and also to other vulnerable consumer groups. People knowledgeable in the area of consumer law know that we cannot adequately provide for these vulnerable groups in legislation, which, by definition, has a general scope, but in a consumer programme, we can focus on target groups and we can accommodate this vulnerable consumer, and that is what we must do if we want to move towards a warm and human society.

This is the first report of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection in more than ten years in which its late chairman, Mr Whitehead, has not taken the floor. We still miss him, and years of warm and friendly cooperation with him have led me to dedicate this report to him. Ladies and gentlemen, I ask your support for all of this, I also ask the Commission and the Council to support our proposal. I thank you for the cooperation, I thank you for your respect for Mr Whitehead, for we owe this to him, and I am also indebted to the people of the Committee’s Secretariat who have plotted the course of this dossier very professionally.

Mr President, allow me say a few words by way of conclusion. It is unlikely that all Members will have a chance to talk before lunch; as such, we will need to reach an agreement on the vote, because this is not a codecision report. If not everyone speaks before lunch, I would suggest moving the vote to next week’s part-session in Brussels, for I think that we cannot let coincidences determine the outcome of this, and that we cannot vote on a topic of this kind with a very small number of people present. That is my suggestion as rapporteur.

  President. – Mrs Thyssen, your request for a postponement of the vote will be put to the House in a moment, right at the beginning of the voting session, by the Vice-President who takes my place.

  Reinhard Rack (PPE-DE). – (DE) Mr President, I want to mention the very situation that Mrs Thyssen has rightly raised. Yesterday we complained – and rightly so – that people were taking the floor and Commissioners were being called on to speak while Members were still coming in and no one could really hear them. Now we have the very same situation again.

If this House is unable either to organise debates so that they keep to time or else that some time is actually left between the vote and the end of the debate, then we really should think about other ways of doing things. On one point, at any rate, I fully support Mrs Thyssen’s suggestion: the vote should be postponed to a time when Members can actually be here.

  President. – I quite understand, Mr Rack, but I must point out that it is at the request of the rapporteur herself, who, as I understand it, cannot be here this afternoon, that we have decided to begin the debate on this report this morning.

We shall now hear from the draftsmen.

  Brigitte Douay (PSE), draftsman of the opinion of the Committee on Budgets. – (FR) Mr President, as well as their health, which we have just debated, the 460 million Europeans want us to give better and better protection to them as consumers. In the context of past and present health crises, or in that of globalisation, which no longer guarantees the traceability of all products, European consumer protection policy, therefore, takes on its full meaning. The internal market cannot indeed function properly without the confidence of consumers. By demonstrating to Europeans that it is genuinely concerned for their health and safety and that it is really equipping itself with the means to take action, the European Union can improve political clarity for them.

I should like to thank Mrs Thyssen for the quality of her report. The Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection (IMCO) has proposed a budget of EUR 233 million spread over seven years specifically for the ‘consumer protection’ action; this budget, which is an increase by comparison with the current programme, is essential if the objectives are to be achieved, ambitious as they are given the new obligations that enlargement entails. Let us hope that these actions will not be affected by drastic cuts in the event of a minimum financial perspective because what European consumers need is a budget that is able to deliver on the policies that they expect in response to their anxieties. This would not be possible if the European Union is on a starvation diet!

I deplore, however, the fact that the amendments on information and the fight against counterfeiting adopted in the Committee on Budgets were not taken up by the IMCO Committee. From the economic viewpoint, however, counterfeiting is a veritable curse as much for health as for consumers. It affects the major brand names, SMEs and all areas of economic and human activity: adulterated medicines, defective household appliances, substandard spare parts, dangerous toys, toxic cosmetics, to give but a few examples.

I feel it is important within the scope of a policy for consumer protection to give better information to the potential clients of counterfeiters about the risks involved. That is why, even if the fight against counterfeiting is included in other actions of this programme, I must insist once again on this aspect of consumer protection.

  Aloyzas Sakalas (PSE), rapporteur for the opinion of the Committee on Legal Affairs. – (LT) I would like to congratulate Mrs Thyssen for preparing a splendid analysis of the European Commission's document. We must also celebrate the fact that the leaders of the European Parliament have decided to separate the consumer rights protection document from the health protection document. Had this not been done, consumer protection would continue to be overshadowed by health protection. However, the separation of the document still does not mean the actual separation of these problems. If control of these two systems is not divided, both of these areas will be run by the same agency. The Committee on Legal Affairs believes that to improve consumer rights protection it is essential to integrate consumer protection into civil law. Meanwhile, the Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Consumer Protection must cooperate closely with the Directorate-General for Justice and the Directorate-General for the Internal Market, as consumer protection is also partly the responsibility of these directorates-general. It is perfectly clear that with the expansion of the internal market it becomes practically impossible for an individual state to implement consumer rights protection without cooperating closely with other EU Member States. Therefore, the EU Consumer Rights Protection Agency must also cooperate closely with national agencies, especially public bodies, as they hold all the information on consumer rights violations. We must recognise that the most vulnerable consumers are children and the elderly, as they are unable to defend their rights effectively. Agencies must pay particular attention to these categories of people. The Committee on Legal Affairs has submitted amendments, which consolidate the aforementioned propositions. I urge everyone to endorse Mrs Thyssen's report together with the amendments proposed by the Committee on Legal Affairs.

  President. – Ladies and gentlemen, I have a little problem that I will explain to you very briefly. We have just listened to the draftsmen of the different Committees responsible. I am supposed to stop the debate at this stage before the block of speakers giving their opinions on behalf of the political groups. However, the speaker for the Group of the European People’s Party (Christian Democrats) and European Democrats, Mr Stubb, cannot be here this afternoon and has asked if he may speak now. His speaking time is three minutes. For the sake of fairness, I must ask the others speaking on behalf of the groups, that is, Mrs Patrie, for the Socialist Group in the European Parliament, Mrs Malmström, for the Group of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, Mrs Svensson, for the Confederal Group of the European United Left/Nordic Green Left, Mr Batten, for the Independence and Democracy Group, Mr Kristovskis, for the Union for Europe of the Nations Group, and Mr Mölzer as a Non-attached Member, if they agree to allow Mr Stubb to speak this morning. If a single one of the Members I have just named objects, then I cannot allow Mr Stubb to speak. On the other hand, if there is no objection, Mr Stubb will speak for three minutes.

Does any one of the six Members I have just named object to Mr Stubb speaking now?

Nobody objects, and I thank them all for that. Mr Stubb, therefore, will be the last speaker this morning in this debate, which will resume at 3 p.m.

  Alexander Stubb, on behalf of the PPE-DE Group. –

(Loud background noise in the Chamber)

Mr President, there is an old Swahili saying: ‘Never stand between a river and a hippopotamus’. I feel a bit like that right now!

I should like to thank Mrs Thyssen for an excellent report. On behalf of my group and myself, I support each and every line. I should like to make three points.

Firstly, I do not believe that we need a separate consumer programme for new Member States. We are one big family. Let us stick to that basic line.

Secondly, we must improve cooperation, but we do not need a new agency to do that, so I would call upon the Commission not to create another agency.

Thirdly, let us try to activate the consumers and remember that the money we are allocating for consumer policy is really not that much: EUR 40 million per year, which is 0.03% of the total budget.

I should again like to congratulate Mrs Thyssen on her excellent work.

(Applause from the PPE-DE Group)

  President. – Thank you for allowing the hippopotamus to get back to the river!

The debate on Mrs Thyssen’s report is suspended. It will resume at 3 p.m. this afternoon.

Annex - Position of the Commission

Thyssen report (A6-0032/2006)

The Commission can accept Amendments 13, 26, 28, 34, 35, 42, 43, 44, 47, 48 and 54.

Amendments 10, 41 and 50 can be accepted in part.

The Commission rejects Amendments 14, 17, 36, 37, 38, 39, 49, 56, 57, 58 and 59.

The Commission rejects on grounds of split Amendments 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11, 15, 18, 19, 20, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 40, 45, 46, 51, 52, 53 and 55.

The Commission rejects/can accept consumer content in: Amendments 8, 12 and 16.

The Commission cannot accept Amendments 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 and 33 as there is a need for reformulation.

(Amendments underlined are new amendments tabled by political groups on 8 March 2005.)

(1) Commission’s position on amendments by Parliament: see Annex .