Brussels, 1st September 2006

Euro Coop is the European Community of Consumer Cooperatives, whose members are the national organisations of consumer cooperatives in 17 European countries. Created in 1957, Euro Coop today represents over 3,200 local and regional cooperatives, the members of which amount to more than 22 million consumers across Europe.

As markets are becoming increasingly complex and competitive, it is clear that consumer information and protection will represent one of the priority challenges for the coming years. In this framework, Euro Coop welcomes the efforts deployed by the Commission to improve consumer protection and information and to introduce the unit Prices Directive requiring traders to indicate both the selling price and the price per unit on all products.

According to us, this initiative since its introduction in 2000 has strongly benefited to European consumers, allowing them to be informed in an unambiguous, easily identifiable and clearly legible manner, and also facilitating them the evaluation and the comparison of prices, thus helping them to make better-informed choices.

This Directive, by aiming at improving consumer protection without putting an excessive burden on retail businesses, affects both consumers and retailers. Therefore, Euro Coop believes that consumer co-operatives, by representing both consumers and business-owners, can offer a global perspective on this issue. Euro Coop thus really appreciates this opportunity to respond to this consultation on the impact of the Directive on the internal market and the overall level of consumer protection, and would be glad to offer its positive contribution.

We generally agree with the measures undertaken by the Commission in this respect, and would like to submit the following comments on the Commission's consultation document:

A. Derogation in article (3)2

Article (3)2 allows derogation for products supplied in the course of the provision of a service, for sales by auction, and for sales of works of art and antiques. Euro Coop believes that, for such products, the indication of the unit price is not particularly relevant to help consumers make informed choices. Thus, we would support the deletion of the derogation. As most Member States have already excluded these products from the scope of the application of national transposition measures, we believe that the appropriate solution would be to definitely exclude these products from the scope of the Directive (option 1). This solution would not put into question consumers protection and would at the same time improve the harmonisation of the prices indication at the European level, thus allowing consumers and enterprises to make a better use of the internal market.

B. Products for which the obligation to indicate the unit price should be mandatory

Although it is acknowledged that Member States have taken different views as to which products should carry the indication of the unit price, there is no evidence that those discrepancies have hindered consumer protection and internal market. Thus, we do not support the proposals put forward in options 1 and 2 for lists to be drawn up for either products where the unit price is not necessary or for products that are within the scope of the Directive. We believe that those options would not be practical and if lists were to be developed, we would call for indicative lists instead of exhaustive lists, as this latter would be too rigid.

However, we estimate that there might be a need to provide some guidance or to develop criteria Member States that must take into account when exempting products (as proposed in option 3). Indeed, we believe that the current divergences between Member States come from the fact there was no indication about the situations where unit prices would not be useful or would be liable to create confusion. However, we think that if there is guidance, it has to be clear that this is guidance only.

C. Specific rules on advertising

In order to ensure a high level of consumer protection at European level, Euro Coop calls for the indication of the unit price in advertising. We estimate that if advertising mentions the selling price it must also indicate the unit price. This indication is essential in order to allow consumers to compare products prices and to make well informed purchases. Therefore we would support the repealing of the article 3(4) and the establishment of a core list of products for which the omission of the unit price in advertising would always be considered unfair (option2).

D. Derogation for small retail business

Consumer co-operatives are conscious of the burden that the obligation to indicate unit price might represent for retail businesses and especially for small ones. For this reason, we would be in favour of the further extension of the derogation in order to re-assess whether technical developments ease the burden faced by small businesses, or if in the contrary case, whether businesses need flanking measures. We would also call for a clear definition of the undertakings which could benefit from this derogation. In any case, the derogation should not be extended for a large period of time. Small businesses must make an effort to comply with such rules otherwise they will risk being marginalised in the market.

E. Minimum harmonisation clause

Euro Coop believes that the minimum harmonisation clause (article 10) should be deleted. Indeed, we estimate that since Member States made no use of the possibility to introduce or maintain more stringent provisions regarding consumer protection than those contained in the Directive, there is no reason to maintain this clause. We would be in favour of a fully harmonised regime for price indications, thus combining a high level of consumer protection with full market integration.

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