Final evaluation of the Consumer Programme (2014-2020)

Key points

The EESC:

• states that the Consumer Programme had helped increase the protection and empowerment of EU consumers. However, given its objectives and timescale, the budget allocation of this programme should have been more ambitious, as should its range of potentially eligible measures and beneficiaries;

• acknowledges the considerable efforts made to boost consumers’ access to redress;

• welcomes that, today, there is a more compact, transparent and accessible system of law enforcement and underlines that it is important to continue to focus on supervisory networks, such as the CPC network;

• believes that multiannual programmes should strengthen their support for countries with a less developed body of consumer-related law;

• insists that it is essential to boost the capacities of consumer associations and calls for stepping up consumer education in schools and other academic environments, especially in the financial and digital fields;

• recommends paying greater attention to the special needs of certain categories of consumers, namely children and young people, the elderly, the unemployed, migrants and people with a disability; 

• emphasises the need to ensure a better system for assisting national authorities with product safety, especially in view of the challenges posed by the internet of things, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence;

• considers essential to simplify procedures for including civil society, to foster transparent and accessible communication, and to ensure that consultations are genuine opportunities for civil society to come forward with real, appropriate and innovative proposals;

• deems important to design and implement future programmes in a clearer, transparent and less bureaucratic way.

For more information, please contact INT secretariat