Services Standards: Defining the Core Consumer Elements ... - ANEC

Services Standards
big issue is the regulation of quality of the service which constitutes the major
subject of co- and self-regulation. This comes down to regulating the content of
the contract, as the quality of the service largely depends on the rights and
duties of the parties.
Payment modalities gain more and more importance. Consumers might be
interested to choose between different payment options. However, the
regulation of payment modalities also covers the question to what extent
advance payments will be possible or prohibited. There is a clear tendency in
service contracts to make the consumer pay in advance, more and more via
credit card (such as package tours, dry cleaning, hotel reservation and air
fares). The regulation on payment services 342 will lay down ground rules.
However, the regulation is not designed to protect consumers only.
The most developed rules exist in the field of financial services. The four-level
mechanism in the Lamfalussy procedure leads to sophisticated rules and to
duplications. The ERGEG is now intensifying its efforts to make propositions on
how to define the quality of the service by way of best practice. The work under
the Service Directive has already started. All of these efforts are legally guided
by broadly termed requirements such as fairness, honesty, professional
behaviour, transparency, best practice.
It remains to be seen whether the results of co-regulation and enhanced selfregulation
meet these broadly termed mandatory requirements. The question
remains whether the non-binding rules which are meant to fully harmonise the
law on the service in question may gain supremacy over binding European and
national consumer law rules, such as those laid down in Directive 93/13/EEC 343 .
342 The Directive has been adopted on the 28.3.2007, however, the final version is not yet
available, see therefore COM (2005) 1.12.2005, 603 final.
343 I would like to thank Norbert Reich for putting emphasis on the relationship between
vertical and horizontal rules in European law, with particular regard to consumer protection.
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