Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2011-11-14-Speech-1-140-000"
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"en.20111114.19.1-140-000"2
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"Mr President, the European Commission announced through the Directorate General of Health and Consumers that it would present the new act on consumer rights in May or June 2012. On that basis, the European Parliament undertook to draft an own-initiative report in order to put its mark on the new act. The draft report was initially undertaken by Eva-Britt Svensson on behalf of my political group; however, she was forced to abandon it when she resigned due to health reasons and I was appointed to complete it.
I should like to express my warmest thanks to Eva-Britt for the work which she managed to do on this report and I wish her a speedy recovery. Both Ms Svensson and I wished to identify the weaknesses and omissions in the system and to include provisions to empower consumers. The basic objectives of the draft report, as formulated in the proposed preliminary draft, were to highlight the problems faced by citizens/consumers, to eliminate inequalities between consumers and in their relations with companies, to safeguard consumer rights in general, with specific emphasis on e-commerce, to establish an effective alternative dispute resolution system, better product safety and a high level of consumer protection, to focus on vulnerable groups of the population in a bid to achieve a more socially fair Europe, to ensure consumers have better access to social welfare services, ecology and sustainability, to reduce the exposure of consumers to dangerous chemicals, such as antibiotics in the meat industry and parabens in cosmetics, to reduce artificial transfats in foods, and to protect children from advertising.
Naturally, the political groups took differing approaches to the above objectives and tabled a total of 188 amendments in order to put forward their solutions to the various issues. In a bid to include as many views as possible in the report without altering its fundamental nature, we formulated 16 compromise amendments with the help of the shadow rapporteurs and the report, as it now stands, was ultimately put to the vote in the Committee on the Internal Market and Consumer Protection on 17 October 2011, when it was adopted by 23 votes to zero, with 10 abstentions.
However, the draft, as adopted, did not satisfy all sides in Parliament: that was because, although the report was a report on consumer policy strategy, it was adopted without any reference to the objective of a more socially fair Europe; at the same time, almost all the references to dangerous carcinogenic chemicals had been deleted, as had the position that direct television advertising targeting children under 12 should be banned.
In light of this development and following agreement with all the political groups, we opened a new round of discussions, which ultimately resulted in a commitment on all sides to support the compromise text proposed for adoption tomorrow, which highlights the problems faced by consumers, who have been rendered more vulnerable by the economic crisis, seeks greater product safety, emphasises the need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, seeks a higher level of consumer protection and environmental protection, expresses concern at the extensive advertising to which children are exposed and recommends ways of combating food waste.
I should like at this point to thank all the shadow rapporteurs for the spirit of collaboration that they demonstrated and for their very important contributions to the final text, in which agreement was reached on the basic aspects of the report, and for all undertaking to vote in favour of it in tomorrow’s vote."@en1
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