Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-03-13-Speech-4-017"
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"en.20030313.1.4-017"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, I am glad that we are able to have a debate today on this important subject, for the Spring Summit is about to be held, at which, every three years, we can give renewed consideration to how Europe can become the most competitive and the most innovative region in the world.
The importance of consumer protection as a subject is not a matter of dispute. What we have to do is get to grips with how we put it into practice. I will appeal to the Commission's rigour in saying that I am, though, firmly convinced that consumer protection does not run counter to these criteria. On the one hand, for example, we are pursuing the objective of a reduction in bureaucracy in Europe. I get the impression, though, that we are creating ever more bureaucracy, thus taking ourselves that extra bit further away from the goal of reducing it.
I would also like to take this debate as an occasion to address the image that we have of consumers and the public. I am a great believer in transparency in the field of consumer protection – by which I mean giving the public the information they need – but, at the end of the day, politics must not, piecemeal, deprive the public of their rights and responsibilities. I am referring here to a quite specific example from an area with which I have been concerned, namely the Consumer Credit Directive, by means of which the Commission is accomplishing a shift that I regard as not entirely justifiable, by abandoning a standard of minimal harmonisation and mutual recognition in favour of maximum harmonisation. This it is achieving, for example, by adopting an inverse burden of proof for banks, which will no longer be required to check with the utmost rigour to what extent a borrower is able to repay the credit.
It goes without saying that this is in the interest of everyone who gives credit and of everyone who sells goods on a hire purchase basis, but there is, at the end of the day, such a thing as the individual's own responsibility. In the final analysis, this is also, in terms of our interest in becoming the world's most competitive region, about what forces we unleash in the economy and among small and medium-sized enterprises.
That is why I am glad of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs' ability to make a contribution in the form of opinions that may be slightly contrary, but that are no less important for that, and also glad that the Commission will in future be united in the line it follows in pursuit of this objective."@en1
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