Press Release: Consumers: Commission launches new system of Consumer Investigations

On 31 January, 2008, EU Commissioner Meglena Kuneva announced the launch of the new 'Consumer Market Watch' process which investigates how markets in various sectors of the economy perform from a consumer perspective. There are two steps to the new process. The first is a comprehensive screening of retail markets against 5 key consumer indicators - prices, complaints, switching rates, satisfaction and safety - for patterns which could indicate market malfunctioning. These irregularities – which may be indicative of practices which distort consumer choice and hinder competition at the retail level - can then trigger the second phase of the process, an in-depth, targeted consumer market investigation and corrective actions. The far reaching new Consumer Market Watch process also benchmarks the strength of the consumer environment in different Member States and the degree of integration of the retail internal market. The process will complement the monitoring and analysis proposed in the recent Single Market Review. The first screening results published today underscore the lack of comprehensive, EU wide comparable consumer data in key areas – Compiling this data is a major task for the next years for consumer policy. On the basis of the available evidence, presented by indicator for more than 20 sectors (services and goods), Commissioner Kuneva announced her intention to partner with Commissioner McCreevy to boost current initiatives to target the retail financial services, in particular the conditions faced by consumers in retail banking, as the priority sector for in-depth consumer analysis for 2008.