Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-15-Speech-1-248"
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"en.20081215.22.1-248"2
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"Mr President, the Commission commends the efforts made by the European Parliament in drafting this report, and will actively examine its conclusions.
I should like to point out, as the report itself clearly indicates, that, insofar as the problem in question concerns business-to-business relationships, a large part of the Community legislation on consumer protection, including Directive 2005/29 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices and Regulation (EC) 2006/2004 on cooperation in the field of consumer protection, does not apply.
A certain form of protection is, however, provided by Directive 2006/114/EC on comparative and misleading advertising. In accordance with these directives, it is incumbent on the public authorities responsible for monitoring the application of legislation and/or on the competent courts of the Member State from which these businesses carry out their activities to decide, on a case-by-case basis, whether a commercial communication is misleading and to take the appropriate coercive action.
I should also like to stress that several authorities and competent courts in Spain and in Belgium, for example, have already taken coercive measures against practices and obtained a number of positive results.
The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive does not cover business-to-business commercial practices since there is no argument in favour of fully harmonising national laws relating to unfair competition. A fully harmonised directive on unfair business-to-consumer practices was already a very ambitious proposal that would have failed had its scope been extended to unfair business-to-business competitive practices.
The consultation that resulted in the proposal and the work within the Council have shown that there was hardly any support for extending the scope of the directive to unfair business-to-business commercial practices. While certain Member States were in favour of extending the scope of the directive and to unfair competition, others voiced their support for consumer protection but opposed the introduction, at EU level, of an additional harmonised system of rules on unfair competition.
Although the Commission cannot take action against the businesses involved in such practices, it has endeavoured to make businesses aware of this problem by presenting it to various European professional organisations. The subject has specifically been raised within the Business Support Network and, at the same time, the Small Business Act calls on the Member States to protect their small and medium-sized enterprises from unfair practices. The Commission will continue to examine other methods of raising businesses’ awareness, if it deems this appropriate.
Furthermore, the Commission has written to the competent authorities of the Member States concerned – Spain, Austria and Germany – to draw their attention to the fact that the situation is ongoing and to ask them for additional information. The responses received make it quite clear that the national authorities are aware of the problem and have legislation with which to tackle it; where necessary, they have already used the measures provided for."@en1
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