Empowering the consumer for the green transition

European Economic and Social Committee opinion on the Proposal for a Directive of the European Parliament and of the Council amending Directives 2005/29/EC and 2011/83/EU as regards empowering consumers for the green transition through better protection against unfair practices and better information, COM(2022) 143 final - 2022/0092 COD.

Key points

The EESC:

• stresses the need to make every effort to ensure that the information concerned is systematically made available to consumers;
• urges the EC to be ambitious by putting into practice the principle of a reparability score for brown and white goods;
• believes that the EC should push forward with the principle of simple and common labelling showing the durability of products in the coming years;
• is of the opinion that training new repairers and upgrading the skills of current operators should also be encouraged;
• also calls on Europe to reduce its dependence on raw materials in order to boost its ability to repair and equip itself with spare parts;
• considers that consumers must be better protected against confusion between legal and commercial guarantees and believes that the primacy of repair over replacement with a new product should also be promoted but without limiting the consumer's free choice of remedy;
• considers that these moves to empower consumers must go hand in hand with better protection against misleading advertising;
• believes that greater powers to verify environmental claims are also needed;
• believes that the European Commission must put greater emphasis on the European eco-label and the need for certification procedures for labelling;
• calls on the EU to strengthen protection for whistleblowers on the environmental characteristics of products and
• calls on the Commission to promote strong consumer awareness of the issues related to responsible consumption.

For more information please contact the INT Section Secretariat.