Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2007-09-06-Speech-4-020"
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"en.20070906.2.4-020"2
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"Mr President, as chair of the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection, I welcome today’s important debate as a first step in reviewing Europe’s consumer policy and, I believe, in renewing our commitment to our consumers. We are very grateful for the work that our rapporteur, Ms Patrie, has carried out.
As has been mentioned several times, this is a timely debate, given announcements made in the summer and again this week for a recall of dangerous products from China that were sold bearing the CE mark – fooling our consumers into believing that such products are safe and meet EU standards. The focus of our debate today and the central objective of our consumer policy must be the protection of consumer safety and health – particularly as regards vulnerable consumers and children. We have to ensure that consumers have rights and remedies when something goes wrong.
I want to use this debate to stress the importance of enforcement, as Ms Thyssen has. The fact is that we have laws on our statute books, but Member States are not demonstrating sufficient commitment to transposing these laws. Long delays are denying consumers their rights. Where consumer laws have been transposed, enforcement is often patchy and haphazard. The RAPEX report, in the case of the notification of dangerous products, shows that not all Member States are participating in the notification system. There is an increased awareness of product safety by both business and national authorities, but more action, Commissioner, is required. Recalling dangerous Chinese toy imports can only be the last resort.
We have a general product safety law, we have a toy safety law but we need to step up enforcement and inspection regimes. This is the only way to ensure that consumers have genuine and effective protection. That is why, Commissioner, I want to encourage you to set up a consumer scoreboard as a tool to report on Member States’ activities in the consumer protection field and to help us, as elected representatives, to follow up on weak enforcement and delayed transposition.
Finally, Commissioner, I want to thank you for coming to me directly, as chair, to discuss the issue of the safety of toys.
I want to pledge the support of our committee to work with you to crack down on the import of dangerous toy products, to get tougher controls at our borders to intercept these products, to obtain stronger national inspection and enforcement regimes, to ensure that products do not get on the shelves in our shops and, of course, to have joint action with the US to force China to raise its production standards to meet EU safety standards. This review, I believe, is a chance for the EU to demonstrate our commitment to European consumers and to offer the highest standards possible – and, indeed, for Europe to be a beacon of consumer protection for the rest of the world."@en1
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