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

Services Standards
Member States are allowed to involve business and consumer organisations in
cross-border cooperation. This is stated in Article 4 (2) of the said Regulation
which enables the Member States to designate bodies having a legitimate
interest in the cessation or prohibition of intra-Community infringements of
consumer law directives. The European Commission seems convinced that
public enforcement prevails over private enforcement through business and
consumer organisations. This might partly result from the fact that EC law, at
least in the form of directives, can only address and bind Member States.
The way in which cooperation between national regulators is organised differs
considerably. Over time, however, the Commission’s strategy is relatively easy
to identify. Loosely knitted networks are gradually replaced by formal legal
structures in which stakeholders have no role to play anymore. This tendency
can be shown in the four different forms of cooperation in the field of services:
(1) The first form is the regulatory committee which is foreseen in the Regulation
2006/2004 on Consumer Protection Enforcement Cooperation under reference to
the comitology procedure 129 . The committee has not yet been set up although the
Regulation has entered into force by 1 st January 2007 130 . It will bring together
only administrations and in the long run probably national consumer agencies.
The committee is mostly concerned with cross border regulatory actions.
The regulatory committee which will have to be established under the Service
Directive is shaped along the line of the comitology procedure. It is entrusted with
wide-ranging competences in order to give shape to rather broad requirements
which are meant to simplify administrative procedures, to further develop the
information requirements, to define the details of the professional liability of
service providers and last but not least to the establishment of an alert
mechanism by way of a network of Member States under auspices of the
European Commission.
The area of postal services follows the same patterns. Directive 97/67/EC 131 has
already set up a regulatory committee within the comitology procedure. However,
not even the revised Directive 2002/39/EC 132 has established a committee where
the national regulatory agencies are grouped together. Contrary to most other
fields of Services, the European legislator has not established a formal regulatory
committee in which the European regulatory agencies are united under an EC
law regime. This might be due to the existence of the European Committee for
129 See Article 19, a ruling which has been introduced under pressure in particular from Austria
and Germany.
130 The EU-wide network of enforcement authorities was officially launched by Commissioner
M. Kuneva on 28.2.2007 on the occasion of the first of regular meetings of EU enforcement
authorities. However, the website does not provide evidence yet on whether the committee
has been set up, http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/prot_rules/admin_coop/index_en.htm.
131 OJ L 15, 21.1.1998, 14.
132 OJ L 176, 5.7.2002, 21
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