Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-09-03-Speech-3-311"
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"en.20080903.25.3-311"2
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"I fully and gladly recognise the value of your suggestions and your input. Opening up a little more the scope of my answer, I would like to say that we are at the stage of completion of the internal market, which really is a foundation of the Union. However, so far the market has been very much oriented to business and to having the right conditions for business, and quite rightly so. Now, though, we need to complete the internal market with a second stage in which consumers feel everywhere equally welcome and equally well protected. That is the consumer policy for the 21st century.
I am very glad to report back to you that, in the Consumer Strategy 2007-2015, education aimed at empowering consumers is the first and very basic pillar of the consumer strategy. I cannot tell you more now, but we have tools like Europe Diary, which precisely targets teenagers, and we have Dolcetta, which is a complement to teacher education, but we are very much reliant on the efforts of the Member States.
We need to see this policy from the point of view of subsidiarity. There are countries which are ready to invest more in consumer education and to support the overall Commission efforts. I have written to all the relevant Ministers asking them for their support, because we are at a really crucial stage as regards having an equally well-performing consumer market all over Europe.
In the future we will talk more about how consumers feel in this internal market. That is one very basic remark. Another is that we need to tackle consumer complaints more, and more broadly. We do not have a common base in the European Commission for consumer complaints. Like you we receive many complaints, some of which are despatched from Parliament to the Commission, from your constituencies, but what we need to build on is how to deal with those complaints. The Commission cannot repeat the efforts of an Ombudsman or of a Member State, but if there is a persistent problem in one or other area of consumer policy, we need to tackle it, including with legislation.
There are good examples which show that consumer complaints could really reorient the mainstream of consumer policy. What we are trying to do now is gather such kinds of information using the consumer market scoreboard. The first edition of the consumer market scoreboard took place at the beginning of this year. We have a special indictor: consumer complaints. We compare the Member States to see how many complaints they are tackling and in what kind of areas. I eagerly await the information from the Member States for the next edition of consumer market scoreboards at the beginning of next year. So, step by step, we are heading in the direction of one internal market for citizens."@en1
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