Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-09-25-Speech-3-212"
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"en.20020925.10.3-212"2
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". – I should like to thank the Members who have spoken on this subject very much for their views.
I shall start with Mr Harbour, who has in his usual eloquent manner impressed the Commission with the need to change over to international recognition. In his closing remarks he said that he wants the Commission, and this Commissioner in particular, to see that consumers get the benefits to which he says they are entitled so that there can be a true single market. I should like to tell Mr Harbour that we already have a single market. That market is confined to the European Union. It is not something that appertains to the whole world.
The Commission is aware that consumers benefit from lower prices. That is obvious. The Commission is very much in favour of seeing to it that consumers benefit from prices which are as low as possible. However, they are not the only ones involved. It is not just consumers who are interested in this matter. Producers are also involved and, in particular, trademark holders. Just as consumers are entitled to the lowest prices that are economically feasible, so the producers of trademarked goods want and are entitled to get protection for their trademarks – but not unlimited protection. That is the reason behind exhaustion in the European Union. There should certainly be a balance between, on the one hand, the interests of the consumer and, on the other hand, the interests of the producer, and the Commission continues to believe that European exhaustion provides for that balance. The Commission has not changed its mind since we last spoke about this issue 12 months ago.
I accept Mr Mayer's apologies. He said the studies are of insufficient quality. I do not accept that. I do not understand why the NERA study should be of insufficient quality. The NERA study, as is well known because it is available, states that the changeover from European to international exhaustion would have a negligible effect on prices. Mr Mayer may know that in his country, Germany, there was once a system of international exhaustion. Because of the policy accepted in Germany on account of the European Union, the changeover was made from international exhaustion to European exhaustion. It was then claimed that certain luxury goods producers had to raise their prices, but we then heard from those luxury goods producers that they had in fact lowered their prices. So, in that specific case, international exhaustion did not produce prices any lower than European exhaustion – quite the contrary.
Mr Mayer may have in mind the studies carried out by the UK and Swedish Governments two years ago. Those studies – interesting as they are – showed that there is a great disparity in prices between the different countries belonging to the European Union. What stuck most in my mind was the 40% difference between electronic goods sold in Sweden and those sold in Germany, which are almost neighbours, apart from the stretch of water between them. A 40% difference in price means that the internal market is not working as it should, because, if it did, prices should be related to objective costs – costs of transport, distribution, etc. But 40% means that other factors come into play. 40% is far and away bigger than any differences in prices that come into play and are discussed in comparisons between international exhaustion and European exhaustion. So I am afraid that the studies of which the Commission is aware – the NERA study was commissioned by the Commission itself – do not support the view that international exhaustion would lead to lower prices, quite apart from the fact that, as I have said before, the rightholders of trademarks are entitled to proper protection, not unlimited protection, but substantial nevertheless.
I thank Mrs Fourtou very much for supporting the NERA study. She has cited the United States and Japan. The Commission agrees with her view. As to her question on the Madrid Protocol, I must tell her that this is in the hands of the Council, and the Commission can only wait for the Council to take a positive decision in this area.
Once again, the report will deal with matters of abuse of trademarks. As I have said, the Commission has sent out 60 letters to companies and legal bodies asking for evidence of abuses of trademark rights. The answers should be in by the end of September. We do not have all the answers yet. We shall wait for them to come in. We shall analyse them. They will be included in the report due at the end of December. I should like to confirm that Parliament will indeed receive that report at the end of December.
I should like to conclude by stressing that the Commission has an open mind on this issue. Only those who have no ideas never change them. The Commission is full of ideas and has an open mind. It is always willing to reconsider. As I said a year ago, the problem is more a lack of definitive evidence showing that there is an advantage in opting for international exhaustion over European exhaustion. I do not believe that the Commission should change its policy without clear evidence of there being an advantage in doing so.
With these remarks, I should like to end my response in winding up this debate. Once again, there will be a report at the end of December. I look forward to a further exchange of views with Parliament once that report has been brought to the attention of this House."@en1
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