In its 2025 Work Programme, the Commission announced a Consumer Agenda for the period 2025 to 2030. It was adopted on 19 November 2025.

This comes five years after the adoption of the New Consumer Agenda, the Commission's strategy for EU consumer policy for the period 2020 to 2025. The previous consumer agenda was adopted in 2012 and was going to expire at the end of 2020.

The New Consumer Agenda was announced in Commission’s 2020 work programme, under its second priority - ‘a Europe fit for the digital age’. It addresses the immediate challenges exposed by the COVID-19 crisis, such as cancelled flights and package travel, deceptive marketing techniques and fraud in online shopping, and presents the following long-term priorities in the field of consumer protection:

• The green transition: The Commission plans to align consumer policy with the European Green Deal and enable consumers to play their part in the green transition by providing them with information on product sustainability, promoting repair and banning false green claims. In 2021, it said it plans to present legislative proposals on empowering consumers for the green transition and on substantiating green claims. The former was finally presented on 30 March 2022. In the context of the review the Sales of Goods Directive, the Commission will also assess how to further promote repair and encourage more sustainable, 'circular' products, and has announced that by the end of 2022, it would present a proposal on the right to repair.
• The digital transformation: EU consumer rules have not always kept up with the rapid development of the digital economy and artificial intelligence (AI). The Commission therefore planed to update a number of legislative acts, including the rules on product safety and possibly on liability, some of which are several decades old. The Commission has submitted a number of proposals introducing new rules governing the digital economy, including the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act; Artificial Intelligence Act; the General Product Safety Regulation (revising the current General Product Safety Directive), and the associated Machinery Directive; a revision of the Consumer Credit Directive; and a revision of the Distance Marketing of Financial Services Directive. In 2021, the Commission announced plans to revise guidelines on applying consumer law to problematic online commercial practices and analyse the need for additional legislation to ensure that consumers are treated with equal fairness online and offline. 
• Redress and enforcement of consumer rights: From the beginning of 2020, the Commission has a stronger mandate to coordinate the enforcement of consumer policy in Member States. It plans to prioritise funding of national authorities’ capacity-building and focus coordinated enforcement actions on misleading green claims, online unfair commercial practices and the impact of COVID-19 on consumers. It also aims to assist Member States in the transposition, implementation and enforcement of the Directive on Better Enforcement and Modernisation of Consumer Law, which entered into application in May 2022, and for the Directive on Representative Actions, which enters into application in June 2023.
• Specific needs of certain consumer groups: The Commission intends to step up protection of vulnerable consumer groups. It plans to increase funding for improving the access for consumers to debt advice in Member States to prevent over-indebtedness, which has become particularly pronounced since the start of the COVID-19 crisis. It also plans to support initiatives providing offline support for consumers who lack access to the internet and strengthen the safety requirements for childcare products.
• International cooperation: The Commission also intends to pursue cooperation with international partners to increase the safety of products. Most notably, it plans to work on an action plan with China.

The Commission presented a statement on the new consumer agenda at the November II plenary in the European Parliament, followed by a debate. 

While Parliament has not previously adopted a resolution specifically on the future of consumer policy, it has already adopted several legislative and non-legislative resolutions on topics covered by the new consumer agenda. Parliament’s resolutions call for a 'comprehensive and future-proof' regulatory framework for artificial intelligence in the EU (2020/2012(INL)), a dedicated regulation on the civil liability claims against operators of artificial intelligence systems (2020/2014(INL)), a comprehensive revision of the E-Commerce Directive (2020/2018(INL)), rules for online advertisements (2020/2019(INL)), and respect for fundamental rights on online platforms 2020/2022(INI). Parliament has also adopted own-initiative reports on the sustainable single market and on the product safety.

On 22 February 2021, the Council adopted its conclusions on the New Consumer Agenda.

References:

• European Commission, New Consumer Agenda: Strengthening consumer resilience for sustainable recovery, COM(2020)696
• EP Legislative Observatory, Procedure file on Towards a New Consumer Agenda beyond 2020, 2020/2874(RSP)
• Council, Council conclusions on the New Consumer Agenda, 6364/21

Further reading:

• European Parliament, EPRS, New consumer agenda, briefing, February 2021
• European Parliament, EPRS, Current developments in consumer protection policy, briefing, November 2024
• European Parliament, EPRS, legislative train carriage, 2030 Consumer Agenda

Author: David Ashton, Members' Research Service, legislative-train@europarl.europa.eu