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

Hans-W. Micklitz
(b) drawing up their own quality charter or participation in the quality
charter or labels drawn up by professional bodies at the Community
level.
(2) Member States shall ensure that information on the significance of certain
labels and the criteria for applying labels and other quality marks relating to
services can be easily assessed by providers and recipient;
(3) Member States shall encourage, in cooperation with the Commission, take
accompanying measures to encourage professional bodies, as well as
chambers of commerce and craft associations and consumer associations, in
their territory to cooperate at Community level in order to promote the quality
of service provisions, especially by making it easier to assess the
competence of a provider;
(4) Member States shall, in cooperation with the Commission, take
accompanying measures to encourage the development of independent
assessments, notably by consumer organisations, in relation to the quality
and defects of service provisions, and in particular, the development at
Community level of comparative trials or testing and the communication of
the results;
(5) Member States, in cooperation with the Commission, shall encourage the
development of voluntary standards with the aim of facilitating compatibility
between services supplied by providers in different Member States,
information to the recipient and the quality of the service provision.
Article 26 is the key to understand the regulatory approach on services. The
starting point in contract law theory is the negotiation between two parties on
the content. The Directive starts from a different premise. It understands quality
of services as an undertaking that must be regulated, not by way of binding
statutory, i.e. national or European legislation, but by way of soft law means
elaborated by
• professional bodies,
• chambers of commerce,
• craft associations,
• consumer organisations –
• and standardisation bodies.
The regulatory means cover a broad array of instruments and tasks:
• certification,
• quality charter (which are available at the national level 229 ),
229 See in particular the chapters on public goods in Italy and France, see the respective
66