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Reports and Memo's
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Brussels, october 1995
[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]
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Decisive years for european consumer protection
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The labelling of foodstuffs
The labelling and presentation of foodstuffs for the final consumer as well as the advertising thereof is of great significance for the consumers. Without complete and accurate information on a product, the consumer is not in a position to make the right choice. This applies to the composition of the product and hence its quality and to the protection of the consumer's health. It concerns also the correctness of the price of the product which the consumer will be unable to assess without precise possibilities of comparison with competing products.
Already at the beginning of the seventies EURO COOP dealt with the labelling of foodstuffs which is an important consumer problem as well as with the harmonization of national rules. A EURO COOP study was produced for the European Commission in 1975 and served as a basis for a Commission proposal that was submitted to, and adopted by the Council on 18 December 1978 under N°79/112/EEC.
Nevertheless this Directive leaves a series of important questions still open. Only a few of them have been regulated so far. The labelling of alcoholic beverages with more than 1,2% in alcoholic strength still has not been decided. Other problems are in the course of being solved such as the sales name, the national language to be used, the quantitative ingredients declaration as well as the labelling of products made of a single component. Other directives such as that of sweeteners have already been amended again in respect of labelling.
It is highly regrettable from the viewpoint of the consumers, that completion of the labelling directive has now dragged on more than 20 years without even having obtained a Commission proposal to the Council concerning advertising claims. Just as regrettable is the absence of any kind of overview on what has been decided so far in connection with Directive 79/112/EEC. A codification of the current text is imperative and therefore the part missing on advertising claims in particular should be adopted as rapidly as possible, even if nothing more were to be stated than that all claims are allowed in advertising provided they are not false or misleading.
In practice, however, consumers continue to be seriously misled, be it due to the frequent absence of indications on fat contents in sausage products or in the case of wine labelling where the imagination of the wine producers seems to know no limits. This is also due to insufficient controls at national level! A comparison of food labelling in the original EU Member States shows almost no uniform framework, not to mention contents!
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[ TABLE OF CONTENTS ]
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