Voices for Change: the Consumer Right to Representation

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34 World Consumer Rights Day 2002: Voices for Change Representation at the European Union The fact that everybody is a consumer should make consumer representation easy, but the opposite is true. Everyone is a consumer, but we are also citizens, workers, employers, industrialists, farmers, traders, professionals and so on. The impact of a political decision for good or ill on producers, for instance, is usually far greater than the impact on individual consumers, and this is one reason why producers are more willing to spend money to influence a specific policy point than consumers. BEUC, the European Consumers Organisation, was founded in 1962 and now represents 33 national consumer organisations from 23 European countries. Despite this representation at the European Union (EU) level, it remains enormously difficult to ensure that the interests of consumers are adequately represented in the decision-making process in the EU. The Treaty of Rome, which gave birth to the European Community, does not mention consumer policy, and it was only slowly that some elements of a common consumer policy have been developed. One of the main challenges currently is to integrate consumer policy into EU policy as a whole, as provided in the Amsterdam Treaty, which entered into force in 1999. Nowadays, representatives of independent consumer organisations sit, as a matter of course, on a wide range of consultative bodies. These include the Consumer Committee, which gives input on EU policy affecting consumers, informs the European Commission of national developments, and reports to the Commission’s Health and Consumer Protection Directorate (DG SANCO). Many other advisory committees also have consumer representatives. Participation in advisory committees is often important, but only as a small part of a much wider advocacy process. There is no permanent consumer representation at the European Parliament or the Council of Ministers, the other two main EU institutions. At the former, consumer policy is examined by the EP Committee on Environment, Public Health and Consumer Policy and by other committees, notably the Legal Affairs Committee. In the Council of Ministers, it is overseen by the Internal Market, Consumer Policy and Tourism Council, which meets about four times a year. As consumer advocates, we see ourselves as one voice and accept fully the legitimacy of other voices in public discourse. Public policy and public welfare would be poorer without strong and influential representation of the consumer interest. – by Jim Murray, Director of BEUC
World Consumer Rights Day 2002: Voices for Change 6 Representation at the Global Level This chapter outlines CI’s efforts to represent the consumer interest at the global level. It is opened by CI President Louise Sylvan, who outlines CI’s strategy. Subsequent sections focus on food, trade, utilities, standards, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue. One of the critical goals of Consumers International is the creation of a strong voice for consumers in the places where important decisions are taken globally. Without representation, the consumer perspective would be virtually absent from the debates about many issues that affect consumers in quite fundamental ways. With the global market, the importance or consumer representation to balance business interests cannot be overstated. CI’s goal of creating of a strong consumer voice through global representation has two basic elements. 1. Creating policy recommendations, coupled with the force and competence (in presentations, networking and lobbying) with which consumer representatives present the policy positions on behalf of us all. This is not just a matter of a good speaker, good strategist or good networker. Critical to the force of our presentations is the research we have conducted on the issue – whether that research has been conducted directly in the marketplace, done from a desk, or is the result of the compilation of the many consumer experiences known to our members. As an example of influential market research, look at CI’s 1999 study on Internet shopping, Consumers@Shopping. This was an absolute agenda-setter that allowed us to set many of the parameters of the global debate on e-commerce. For a wonderful example of desk research, Unpacking the GATT, published by CI in 1995, is probably without peer as a demystifying strategy. A prime example of aggregating consumer grassroots knowledge and experience to influence policy comes from the impact assessments by CI members on WTO agreements in agriculture and services, released last October in Geneva. The fact that the WTO held a seminar there on CI’s behalf, with excellent attendance by government representatives, shows how effective this can be. 2. Creating an influential voice in our own nations before international meetings occur. The national-global nexus is critical to our success at international level. Our government representatives come to these global meetings generally with positions decided well before they board the planes. The interplay between governments and consumer representatives at a global meeting is generally as important as the work each of our organisations has done in the lead-up to that meeting. What will be terrific – and we’re not far off – is when our consumer representatives’ contingent is big enough for our members to have the time to advise us if our governments “misbehave” in the presentation of previously agreed positions when they’re sitting at the negotiating table. It’s certainly happened – I’ve watched Australian government delegates 35
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Voices for Change: the Consumer Right to Representation

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