‘Miracle’ products face tougher controls

Date: 08/10/1998

By Myles Neligan

THE European Commission is planning to tighten up existing EU laws on false advertising and labelling to regulate the sale of 'miracle products' - goods which are marketed on the strength of fantastic but unsubstantiated claims.

But officials say it will take them until the end of next year to establish precisely what changes to the current legislation are needed.

Critics claim this means the booming EU trade in unreliable and unproven remedies for ailments such as baldness, obesity and impotence will grow unchecked for at least another two years, since any proposal from the Commission to amend existing laws must be approved both by national governments and the European Parliament.

Consumer Affairs Commissioner Emma Bonino's staff blame the slow progress to date on the failure of member states to respond promptly to questionnaires on the sale of miracle products, sent out by the Commission as part of its efforts to assess the extent of the problem.

Seven EU governments have yet to reply and of the remainder, only the Netherlands and Denmark have submitted complete responses. "The problem is that there is a complete absence of reliable information on the value of the market for miracle products and on different measures to control their sale that have been introduced at national level," said one official. "We cannot tell what form of action at EU level would be most appropriate until we are better informed."

But consumer groups and national officials retort that the delay is partly due to the Commission's inability to decide how to tackle the problem. When the institution first started investigating the issue in 1995, it announced that it planned to propose entirely new EU legislation to cover the sale of miracle products. It did not finally decide to take the alternative route of reinforcing existing measures until last month.

The Commission now plans to publish the conclusions of its miracle products survey before coming forward with proposals to tighten up advertising and product labelling laws in the EU.

But officials say that as existing laws are not uniformly enforced in all Union countries, some governments may have to be encouraged to bring their advertising and labelling rules into line.