Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-03-13-Speech-2-206"
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"en.20070313.21.2-206"2
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"Thank you, Mr President. I do not know whether you will all be disappointed or not, but my birthday is on 22 June. Today is Commissioner Frattini’s birthday. If you will allow me, I will pass on all these good wishes and congratulations to him. I can assure you that he fully deserves it. Anyway, thank you and I hope that on 22 June I can somehow be here at Parliament again to receive my fair share!
Let us start with the questions. Mrs Pleštinská, it is really very important to for all our policies to be financially supported, and we will do our best to accommodate them within the framework of our budget. I believe that the most important thing for you is how you see the policy and how we can maximise what we have in terms of resources through our budget. This relates to education, information, European Consumer Centres and strengthening enforcement. We can think of many other ways of spending the money, but these are the priorities. In this respect, I am more than happy that you mentioned the EU diary. Just today, I distributed several copies during the meeting of the College of Commissioners as a reminder of how important it is as a tool. This will remain one of the best ways in which we can be in touch with the younger generation.
Talking about the younger generation, I think that we what we have in mind about digital rights is very much in line with what they are looking for. The day after tomorrow, I have a meeting in Berlin on digital rights and I will specially address the younger members of the audience. In this way they could become more interested in what it means to be a consumer in this, our evolutionary world – Europe.
And now I come to Mrs Gebhardt’s question. It is always very important to have a precise policy and a precise vision about how we can use the framework directive, what kind it should be – because there can only be one – and what kind of sectoral influence we could pursue. I am in favour of this mixed approach. I am sure that this horizontal set of rules equally applied to typical consumer contracts and typical consumer rights, relating to enforcement or whatever – this is maybe not in the soul but in the core of consumer protection – is very important.
But we cannot exhaust all the sectoral problems. That is why I think we should also focus our attention very much on having sound performance in consumer protection, most importantly in energy, in transport and in telecommunications. That is why I think that being part of the Competitiveness Council is very important. Also, the competition Commissioner is a natural ally for consumer policy.
So, coming to Mrs Thyssen’s question about redress, I do not have in mind the United States type of class action. This is not a John Grisham story. We have another, European narrative, and this is much more related to collective redress. We have this collective redress in at least ten countries and, in one country, Holland, it is closer to a class action, but is still not the same. This is not the only collective redress. We can use alternative dispute resolutions, which are important, test cases and many other things. This is not about maximum harmonisation, but about bottlenecks – when and how we can identify them – and about focusing our attention on this in respect of the highest possible level of harmonisation.
So, Mr Harbour, thank you for saying that I am trying to be a consumer champion. I would gladly share this role with any of my fellow Commissioners, because I dream of having a consumer champion from the other sectors.
As regards the Rome Convention, I think that through full harmonisation we can at least overcome some of the shortcomings of Rome I. Right now, as regards Rome I, businesses should comply with the rules of the country from which the problem originates, which does not significantly increase the burden on the business side.
I think I have virtually answered Mr Schwab’s question about what kind of harmonisation we are targeting and about class action. I do not want to challenge the President’s patience by giving quite long answers, but I will be glad to continue this conversation with all of you."@en1
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