Voices for Change: the Consumer Right to Representation

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42 World Consumer Rights Day 2002: Voices for Change counterbalance to the strong business influence on the transatlantic process. TACD members participate through working groups on specific issues. The Working Groups formulate resolutions and recommendations that are transmitted to the EU and US governments. Some 65 resolutions have been adopted since the birth of TACD. A recent development has been the decision to focus on a list of priority issues. The current list of priorities includes the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and trade in services, GM foods, the precautionary principle, consumer protection in e-commerce, and access to medicines. As it deals with government policies, the TACD communicates almost exclusively with EU and US officials. It does this through its annual meeting, where government officials discuss topics on an agenda set by TACD members. There is a smaller-scale Leaders Meeting held annually in which the Steering Committee and Working Group Chairs meet with a smaller number of government officials. Through these meetings, the TACD is slowly establishing relations that will increase access to government officials year round. The Dialogue is far from achieving the kind of access that the TABD and business community have built up and enjoyed over the last decade. There is now an informal arrangement for two TACD representatives to be invited to every other EU-US Summit to meet the three Presidents (US President, President of the European Commission, and the head of state representing the EU Presidency). This is a welcome symbolic gesture, but the ten minutes allotted to meeting the Presidents makes it little more than that. Success for the TACD is hard to measure. For example, access to medicines for developing countries has been a priority for TACD and was discussed face-to-face with government officials at our meetings. But it is impossible to tell how much influence, if any, the TACD had on the EU and US governments’ change of policy with regards to AIDS medicines and their own pharmaceutical companies. The TACD has also raised the interest of many consumer organisations in the work of the TransAtlantic Economic Partnership, familiarised US organisations with the European Union and its institutions, and helped EU consumer organisations better understand the political institutions of the US. For more information, see: http://www.tacd.org
World Consumer Rights Day 2002: Voices for Change Annex A: Organisations Responding to Survey 1. Albanian Consumer Association, ALBANIA 2. Liga Acción del Consumidor (ADELCO), ARGENTINA 3. Consumidores Argentinos, ARGENTINA 4. Unión de Consumidores y Usuarios, ARGENTINA 5. Union for the Protection of Consumers’ Rights, ARMENIA 6. Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), AUSTRALIA 7. Australia Consumers’ Association (ACA), AUSTRALIA 8. Verein fur Konsumenteninformation (VKI), AUSTRIA 9. Independent Consumers’ Union (ICU), AZERBAIJAN 10. Minsk Consumer Society, BELARUS 11. Belarussian Society for Consumer Protection (BSCP), BELARUS 12. Que Choisir Benin (QCB), BENIN 13. Comité de Defensa del Consumidor (CODEDCO), BOLIVIA 14. Instituto Brasileiro de Politica e Direito do Consumidor (BRASILCON), BRAZIL 15. Instituto Brasileiro de Defesa do Consumidor (IDEC), BRAZIL 16. Association Burundaise des Consommateurs (ABUCO), BURUNDI 17. Mouvement National des Consommateurs du Cameroun (MNC), CAMEROUN 18. Association pour la Défense des Droits des Consommateurs (ADC), CHAD 19. Organización de Consumidores y Usuarios de Chile (ODECU), CHILE 20. Macao Consumer Council, CHINA 21. Consumidores Colombia (COCO), COLOMBIA 22. Croatian Association for Consumer Protection, CROATIA 23. Cyprus Consumers Association, CYPRUS 24. Consumers Defence Association of the Czech Republic (CDACR), CZECH REPUBLIC 25. Consumer Council, Denmark (DCC), DENMARK 26. Fundación por los Derechos del Consumidor (FUNDECOM), DOMINICAN REPUBLIC 27. Tribuna Ecuatoriana, ECUADOR 28. Centro para la Defensa del Consumidor (CDC), EL SALVADOR 29. Consumer Council of Fiji, FIJI 30. Union Fédérale des Consommateurs (UFC), FRANCE 31. Verbraucherzentrale Bundersverband (VZBZ), GERMANY 32. Liga del Consumidor (LIDECON), GUATEMALA 33. Hong Kong Consumer Council, HONG KONG 34. General Inspectorate of Consumer Protection (GICP), HUNGARY 35. Consumer Education & Research Society (CERS), INDIA 36. Public Foundation – National Consumer League of Kazakhstan (NCLK), KAZAKHSTAN 37. Consumer Information Network (CIN), KENYA 38. Club for Protection of Consumers Interests (CPCI), LATVIA 39. Consumer Rights Protection Centre of Latvia (LRCP), LATVIA 40. Consumers Union of Luxemburg, LUXEMBURG 41. Organisation of Consumers Macedonia (COM), MACEDONIA 42. Consumers Association of Malawi (CAMA), MALAWI 43
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Voices for Change: the Consumer Right to Representation

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