Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-25-Speech-3-211"
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"en.20020925.10.3-211"2
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"Mr President, I should like to take Commissioner Bolkestein back to the last part-session here when we discussed sales promotion. He may remember that I complimented him because he had written an article in a journal complimenting Parliament on rescuing the internal market.
It is slightly disappointing therefore to find him back here at the following part-session adopting such a cautious approach on such a fundamental single market issue. In this case we are not talking about the single European market. We are talking about global markets and about the freedom of consumers to be able to benefit from lower prices for identical goods that are placed on the market, quite legitimately, outside the European Union, and which are then imported.
I want to remind him – and he cautiously skirted around this in his answer – that we are discussing an archaic piece of legislation. The Trademarks Directive in its original form was certainly introduced to protect trademarks and to secure consumer confidence that they would know what they were buying. But subsequently, in cases before the Court of Justice, it is now being further elaborated into a means whereby trademark owners can actually protect their brand, or supposedly protect their brand and their authorised distribution systems, by essentially keeping prices higher artificially.
He asked us quite rightly to say what has changed. I shall tell him what has changed. The first thing is that consumers are getting increasingly irritable about what they see as the failure to act on what ought to be a fundamental right. That consumer pressure was quite rightly cited by his colleague, Mr Monti, when we had a complete and total reform of the legislation relating to the selling and servicing of motor cars. What has that done? It has opened up the distribution system across the European Union. Essentially, cars will be available across borders much more freely than they were before and prices which differ from one market to another will clearly converge.
So why should this be any different? I have to disagree with my colleague Mrs Fourtou. It is not a question of counterfeiting or other spurious issues. Surely the reason we have so many of these counterfeit brands is because the genuine brands are prevented from being sold at the price that consumers want to buy. It is a circular argument. I hope that in the July report he has commissioned he will have the facts available and that he will be able to meet the deadline of the end of December that we asked him to meet. This needs to happen so that we can come up with a sensible balanced view, not looking to the past, looking at all the evidence, to the benefit of consumers. We need to continue together with the Commissioner the task of creating a true single market for consumers.
I hope he will give us an assurance this evening that he is prepared to move from his overly cautious approach and join with us in the crusade to give consumers across Europe a better deal."@en1
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