Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-06-Speech-4-015"
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, I would also like to thank Mrs Patrie very warmly for the very good cooperation from the outset. I must admit that the first draft you presented made it quite difficult for us to introduce substantive amendments. Unfortunately, however, the situation has changed somewhat. The debate in the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection and the proposals, most of which came from Members of the PPE-DE and ALDE, in my view send the wrong signal to the Commission, which now has the task of developing the genuinely substantive further steps on the basis of the Green Paper.
Above all, however, the outcome in the Committee on the Internal Market sends out the wrong signal about consumer protection. For us, the protection of the interests of the consumer is the priority. If I may remind you all of recent developments, notably the product recalls of toys, it should be clear to every one of us that there is an urgent need for action. In the Committee on the Internal Market, we voted against the report because in our view it pointed in the wrong direction in some respects. Again, it was Mrs Patrie who made very committed efforts to produce compromise amendments. Let me say upfront that the voting behaviour, the recommendation to our group, will largely depend on the outcome of today's vote.
Let me identify what could be regarded as our 'sore points'. We do not want to see full harmonisation resulting in the elimination of the stringent consumer standards that exist in some Member States. Apart from individual issues of law and legal definitions – and Mrs Gebhardt has reiterated this point – we believe that minimum harmonisation is more appropriate. However, that should not, in our view, go hand in hand with the principle of mutual recognition. In the case of transnational contracts, that could ultimately mean that consumers are confronted with 27 different legal systems, which would be quite overwhelming, to my mind. Furthermore, the indirect introduction of the country of origin principle is in our view also inappropriate as a means of protecting consumer interests.
As regards the exclusion of unfair terms in contracts, we want the Directive on unfair terms in consumer contracts to be applicable to individually negotiated clauses as well. We also take the view that the introduction of producers' liability will give major impetus for consumers to utilise the benefits of the European internal market as it will give them more confidence that their rights will genuinely be asserted, including in relation to a producer in another Member State. Mrs Wallis has drawn particular attention to this situation.
Finally, I would ask you to support our Amendment 16 in which we make it clear that we would appreciate a legal and academic appraisal of the instrument of class actions. This request has been endorsed by a majority in the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. That should encourage most of us to support the motion. In that respect, perhaps I do want to see US conditions in Europe."@en1
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