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

Hans-W. Micklitz
precedent in a two-fold sense: first the EC legislator might have used financial
services just as a starter to be followed in other areas of the law, and secondly,
the context of best practice reveals its strong economic efficiency bias.
3. Best practice in the network industries
The two Directives on electricity and gas, 2003/54/EC and 2003/55/EC, do not
yet contain the best practice rhetoric. Best practice, however, appears most
recently, i.e. in July 2006, in three recommendations 293 meant to improve the
position of the end customer. The three recommendations on
• Customer Protection – Best Practice Proposition,
• Transparency of Prices – Best Practice Proposition,
• Supplier Switching Process – Best Practice Proposition,
will concretise Annex A of the two Directives, which lays down the basic
customer protection rules. The three recommendations constantly reiterate that
the three recommendations are to be regarded as best practice. However, there
is no help in defining what is meant by best practice and in what way the
practices are “best”.
a) Impact on standardisation of services
The EC policy behind is quite different from the financial services sector. The
two directives 2003/54/EC and 2003/55/EC do not contain much guidance on
what the relationship between the consumer and the service provider should
look like. This is largely left to the Member States. However, the relevant
European institutions, which might be understood as a counterpart to the
European Standards Bodies, have tried to develop non-binding rules in order to
fill this gap. Here the notion of best practice crops up a number of times, again
without explaining what is meant.
4. Best practice in the new policy on services
The different pieces of legislative measures which could be referred to, e.g. the
Service Directive, the intended revision of the New Approach and the lack of a
Commission policy on safety of services indicates that the development with
regard to standardisation lags far behind those of investment services.
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