THE EUROPEAN Commission launched a set of proposals last month to enhance the rights of EU consumers. The proposed directive simplifies four others and reduces them to a single set of rules, taking full account of the realities of business in the 21st century where cross-border shopping and e-commerce account for an increasing share of consumer activity. Today some 150 million EU citizens shop over the internet. Of these, only 30 million shop online outside their national borders.
The commission plans to make it easier for consumers to shop either on the internet or on the main street on an EU-wide basis by ensuring that consumers' rights are fully protected in a uniform way. For almost two decades the EU's single market where people, goods, services and money move freely, has operated successfully. But consumers - unlike producers - have never secured the full benefits of a market of some 500 million people. This legislative change is an attempt to reduce that imbalance.
The commission's move to modernise and consolidate EU consumer law has prompted a matching response here. Last week the Government set up an expert body (the Sales Law Review Group) to update Irish consumer law in the light of the initiative from Brussels. To date the EU's four existing directives on consumer protection set out certain minimum requirements that member states must accept. National governments, however, were free to add their own rules. And they did so. The result: 27 different sets of unco-ordinated rules unsuited to a world of cross-border transactions and internet shopping. These have left consumers without proper legal protection. For each country has different laws whether on cooling-off periods for purchases or on refunds or the repair of goods.
The draft directive also provides new opportunities to traders. They can offer goods for sale on a cross-border basis without facing a different set of national regulations in each member state. The Government, wisely, has used the occasion to review Irish legislation as it prepares its response to the European Commission's proposals. Irish consumer law is a mix of the Sale of Goods Act 1893 and the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act 1980 and secondary legislation derived from the existing four EU directives. Both Irish and European consumer laws need to be reviewed and modernised. The expert legal group is well placed to advise the Government on how both goals might best be achieved.