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

Services Standards
Summary and introduction
I. Summary
Standardisation of services will help to accomplish the Internal Market for
Services. This is the overall message enshrined in the Services Directive 1 which
was adopted in December 2006. However, the European Commission has not
embedded standardisation of services into a concept that makes the well-known
“New Approach” to technical standards and harmonisation to cover services as
well. Instead the European Commission and the Standards Bodies are using
the New Approach infrastructure to develop a whole set of standards on
services. The old issue of how an adequate contribution by the consumer to the
process of standardisation may be secured now requires adequate answers – in
the field of services. Unlike products, services are much less subject to
technical specifications. Standardisation of services quite necessarily affects the
legal-contractual environment to a significant degree. This is in essence what
the study is all about – it defines the core consumer elements which should
ideally govern the standardisation of services in the future.
Services are not a new area of EC regulation. The EC legislator has adopted a
whole series of directives and regulations on services, dealing either directly
with consumer services (consumer credit, package tour, time sharing), or more
indirectly by way of opening up sectoral markets for financial services
(investments, insurances) or public goods (telecommunication, postal services,
electricity, gas, transport). All in all there is a dense, though inconsistent,
network of EC regulation of services available that frame the standardisation of
services. Existing EC regulation, the existent technical standards elaborated at
the European and the national level, as well as best practice legislation and
non-binding codes and guides, provide the ground for the development of seven
core consumer elements: education and skills, equipment and premises, the
pre-contractual stage and contract conclusion, content of contract, post
contractual stage, monitoring and inspection and, last but not least, democratic
accountability of rule-making.
When viewed against the seven core consumer elements, EC regulation of
services, European standards and national standards on services still reveal
substantial deficiencies. All in all the EC legislator seems better prepared to
take the consumer dimension into consideration. Standard-setting needs a
1 OJ L 376, 27.12.2006, 36.
7