National consumer enforcement authorities in EU and EEA countries (“CPC Authorities”), with the steering of the Commission, coordinate their investigation and enforcement activities to effectively tackle widespread infringements of EU consumer laws. After various signals on the alleged infringement and the review of the commercial practices of traders involved, CPC Authorities can decide to launch a coordinated action. Following the coordinated investigation, the concerned CPC Authorities might adopt a Common Position, in which they inform the trader about their concerns. Subsequently, the CPC Authorities and the Commission start discussions with the trader to ensure compliance with EU consumer laws. If the results of the communication with the trader are not satisfactory, the CPC Authorities can take rigorous enforcement measures in a coordinated manner.
Coordinated actions of the CPC network:
Parship
Following a dialogue with the CPC authorities, dating website Parship has improved the information displayed on its website regarding the exercise of the right of withdrawal and the automatic renewal of the contract. With the changes, consumers will be better informed what they have to pay if they subscribe to a dating website. The changes are applicable on Parship websites in EU/EEA countries.
Airline cancellations
The travel restrictions applied by countries during the Coronavirus pandemic has led to mass cancellations of flights. As part of its efforts to ensure consumer and passenger rights are upheld during the Coronavirus pandemic, the European Commission continuously assesses the protection of EU rights in the case of flight cancellations by airlines. The Commission and the CPC Network have now taken it a step further by launching a coordinated survey on airlines’ current cancellation practices.
The objective of the survey is to gather further information from airlines operating in the EU on how they inform consumers on their passenger rights and handle reimbursement requests. In cases where airlines have persistent difficulties in reimbursing all consumers in due time, airlines are asked to provide information on what they are doing to rapidly address those difficulties.
The Commission used information from various sources, including BEUC, the EU-level federation of consumer associations, and the French and Belgian consumer organisations UFC-Que Choisir and Test achats/Test aankoop, which had indicated that it remained difficult for passengers whose flights had been cancelled by the airline to be reimbursed in money, if they preferred.
CPC authorities from six Member States (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden) coordinate for the network the surveys and the dialogues with the airlines concerned. The Swedish Consumer Agency coordinates the surveys and dialogues with most of the airlines concerned.
COVID-19
Misinformation and disinformation in the health space are thriving, including on COVID-19. Consumers should beware of online scams related to products that allegedly can cure or prevent the COVID-19 infection. Rogue traders advertise and sell products, such as protective masks, caps and hand sanitisers to consumers, which allegedly prevent or cure an infection but they may be fake.
To help fight such practices, the Commission has brought together the national authorities working under the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation. They adopted the CPC common position COVID19 on how to deal with COVID-19 related scams (see here Scams related to COVID19).
AliExpress
The Netherlands Authority for Consumers and Markets (ACM), working closely with the Commission and the CPC Network, has obtained EU-wide commitments from AliExpress to ensure that its practices as well as those of its traders respect EU consumer law:
- Right of withdrawal – under EU law, consumers have the right to cancel a distance sales contract within 14 days after having received the good and without providing a reason;
- Legal guarantee – In the EU, sellers are liable to consumers for any lack of conformity of a good with the contract that becomes apparent during a period of 2 years from delivery;
- Extra costs – under EU law, prices must include all fees payable by consumers, including VAT; where extra costs may arise, for example customs duties at the border, and they cannot be estimated precisely in advance, their existence must be prominently indicated;
- Sellers must provide information on their identity and geographical address;
- Ranking – where sellers pay to the online platform to appear higher in the search results, this must be prominently communicated to consumers;
- Complaints and legal action – Information on where consumers can take legal action or complain against a trader (i.e. in their country of habitual residence and not before a court or dispute resolution body in Hong Kong for example) needs to be provided;
In addition, AliExpress committed to update their General Terms & Conditions, which must be drafted in plain and intelligible language and must not create a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations to the detriment of consumers, by no later than 1 May 2021.
The Commission and CPC authorities will now assess the correct and full implementation of these commitments and continue to monitor, whether discounts and time-limited offers are authentic and presented to consumers in a transparent manner.
Further information on customs duties and VAT can be found here: Buying goods online coming from a non-European Union country
Consumer fraud
Consumer protection authorities are carefully looking into the issue of frauds and scams experienced by consumers. Today, consumers are targeted by increasingly sophisticated misleading or fraudulent practices and scams, via different channels, both offline and online. Consumers can be targeted while shopping online, on social media, via telephone, text messages, e-mails or face to face through doorstep sales. This potentially has far reaching and damaging consequences for individuals and broader society alike.
Booking.com and Expedia Group
Following a dialogue with the CPC authorities, Booking.com and Expedia Group have committed to changes in the way they present offers, discounts and prices to consumers. With the changes, consumers should be better able to make informed comparisons in line with the requirements of EU consumer law. The changes are applicable on Booking.com and on the Expedia brands – Expedia, ebookers and hotels.com.
Social media
As more and more consumers were targeted by fraud and scams through social media, a Joint CPC action was launched to get the main social media operators (Facebook, Twitter, Google+) to bring their terms of service into conformity with European consumer law; and to create a “notice and action” procedure for CPC authorities to report and request the removal of online illegal content.
Airbnb
Following the joint action of the CPC authorities, Airbnb improved its presentation of prices in order to ensure that, whenever properties are offered, the consumer is provided with the total price inclusive of all the applicable mandatory charges and fees. Moreover, the company agreed to improve the fairness of its terms of services and to distinguish professional traders from private peer hosts
Volkswagen
Following the Dieselgate scandal, the CPC authorities sent a letter to the Volkswagen Group, on 7 September 2017, urging the group swiftly repair all affected cars. In December 2017, Volkswagen committed to continue to offer free-of-charge repairs in 2018. In July 2018, the European Commission and national consumer authorities published their conclusions on the 8.5 million car recalls made in the Union by the Volkswagen group after the Dieselgate. Authorities welcome the VW Group’s effort to build trust in the recall and the significant improvement in the information provided to consumers. The rate of repair is now reaching 80% and the Group committed to continue the free of charge update until the end of 2020. The Commission and consumer authorities, however, regretted that the company could not give a full and clear guarantee in case of problems after the repair.
The Commissioner for Justice and Consumers Didier Reynders, wrote to Volkswagen Group on 11 August 2020 to strongly encourage the group to offer fair compensation to all affected EU consumers, stressing that consumers expect to be treated with fairness and receive adequate compensation for the damage they have suffered in a similar way across the Union.
Car-rental
In January 2017, the CPC Network published commitments made by the five major car rental companies. The companies committed to pricing transparency and clearer terms and conditions, including clarity on insurance and waiver policies and tank refuelling options, and more fairness when handling alleged instances of damage to vehicles.
In March 2019, the CPC Network published its assessment of the commitments made by the car rental companies in 2017. The assessment noted that Enterprise and Sixt made all the required changes. Avis committed to make remaining changes by May 2019. Europcar, which now includes Goldcar, committed to implement the remaining changes by June 2019. Hertz committed to make all the necessary changes at the latest by the first quarter of 2020.
The European Commission and national consumer authorities in the European Consumer Cooperation network will follow the implementation of the remaining changes closely. Although the companies involved in this action cover two out of three of all private car rentals in the EU, other traders, such as intermediaries and smaller companies play an important role in this market. The authorities and the European Commission will continue monitoring all players to ensure they fully respect EU consumer rules.
In-app purchases
The CPC Network asked the Internet platform providers Apple and Google as well as the association of online game developers, ISFE, to propose solutions to identified problems regarding in-app purchases in online games such as: misleading advertising of games as “free”; direct exhortation to children; issues around purchase information and consent; and failure to provide trader’s contact details.
Dual quality of food
EU-wide testing campaign
On 23 March 2021, the Commission published the results of the second part of its EU-wide testing campaign comparing food products marketed with the same branding.
The first part of this campaign, which compared the ingredients lists and front-of-pack information of almost 1,400 food products across 19 EU Member States for potential cases of dual quality was published on 24 June 2019.
The EU-wide testing campaign was based on a common testing methodology, developed by the Commission’s Joint Research Centre in close collaboration with all key stakeholders concerned, in order to gather scientific and comparable evidence regarding the scope and dimension of the issue in the EU’s Single Market. This methodology had the following objectives:
The Commission funded the development and implementation of the common testing methodology with EUR 1 million from the 2017 Consumer Programme as one important strand of action that the Commission initiated after President Juncker’s State of the Union speech in September 2017 to address the issue of dual quality, to which the Commission dedicated almost EUR 5 million from the EU budget. The results of the testing campaign help the competent authorities of the Member States to base their dual quality investigations on a sound evidence base
Clarification of the relevant consumer protection legislation and capacity-building
In parallel, the Commission proposed to clarify the relevant consumer protection legislation as part of its 2018 New Deal for Consumers legislative initiative. This legislative amendment, which was adopted by the European Parliament and the Council on 28 November 2019, clarifies when “dual quality” practices mislead consumers and are contrary to the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.
Besides the legislative clarification and the EU-wide comparison of quality related aspects of food products, the Commission continues to engage in further fact-finding and provides co-funding for the competent authorities of the Member States and NGOs.