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

Hans-W. Micklitz
• Consumer representation in standardisation should be given a legal
status. This might best be realised in the requested establishment of a
quasi New Approach to services. The vague reference to the
involvement of consumer organisations in the shaping of quality of
services under Article 26 of the Services Directive does not suffice. What
is really needed is a binding piece of EC legislation, ideally a directive or
regulation that clarifies the status of consumer organisations.
• Consumer representation in European Standards Bodies should benefit
from equal rights and duties: they should be given an EC law based right
to participate in standardisation, to have free access to all relevant
documents, to make proposals for standards in whole and in part and, in
case these proposals are not taken into consideration, or in case the
consumer representation does not agree with those standard which have
to be published in the Official Journal of the European Union, the right to
ask for review. Such review might be dealt with in a dispute settlement
body that meets the requirements of Recommendation 98/257/EC on
out-of-court settlement.
• Consumer representation in European Standards Bodies should be
granted adequate funding. The European Commission and the Member
States are united in the idea that standardisation is not restricted to
technical issues, but that public policy issues – such as consumer
protection, health, safety, environmental protection – maybe dealt with as
well. If Member States and the European Commission delegate public
policy issues to Standards Bodies, there is ample justification for
consumer representatives to claim adequate funding.
III. To the European Commission and CEN/CENELEC: Improving the
consumer impact on European standardisation of services
The European Commission and Standards Bodies understand standardisation
to be a success story. However, there is no hard empirical evidence on whether
it is a success story for consumers, and whether consumer representatives
succeeded in influencing standard-setting to the benefit of consumers, and if so,
to what extent. Standardisation of services is a relatively new field. It therefore
permits the development of new strategies, whether this be to monitor the
existing consumer impact on standardisation and to test and verify the impact of
consumer representations, or be it to strive for new ways of increasing the
impact on standardisation in future.
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