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

Hans-W. Micklitz
borderline between establishing rights and duties and giving shape to already
existing legal rights and duties is not clear-cut.
3. Too much of a challenge for ANEC alone?
European standards on services are the gateway to the European market on
services. ANEC, as the European representative of consumers in
standardisation, legitimises the standards-making process. As long as
standardisation of services focuses on mere technical aspects, mostly related to
product-bound services, the challenge for ANEC is mainly one in terms of
quantity – the workload increases – and in terms of quality, e.g. having a
yardstick at hand, the so-called “core elements” of consumer needs in service
standardisation.
However, the challenge is different if standardisation of services is really meant
to design rights and duties of contracting parties. The analysis of the already
existing standards and draft standards on services will have to show whether
and to what extent the already existing projects concern contract-making.
Different levels of legitimacy have to be distinguished.
• The most far reaching dimension concerns the degree to which
European Standards Bodies can be entrusted with the task of silently
harmonising European contract law on services and whether the
participation of consumer organisations can legitimise such a transfer of
powers.
• The extension to contract making could facilitate the input of consumer
organisations, as consumer contract law was their major field of work for
decades. Here consumer organisations may not have to face the
challenge of lacking the necessary professional (legal) skills.
• The extension to contract making imposes, however, an additional
burden on ANEC, which is designed to organise the technical and
scientific consumer input to standardisation. The point then is whether
and to what extent ANEC and BEUC have to cooperate in order to
secure the most efficient input.
• It will have to be checked to what extent technical skills and legal skills
may be tied together so as to increase the consumer input into
standardisation, be it with regard to sector-specific vertical fields of
services, or with regard to horizontal issues which touch upon all sorts of
services, irrespective of sector.
22