Consumer Protection Cooperation Network

Sharper teeth for EU consumer protection.

How are consumer rights enforced in the EU?

National authorities in individual countries are responsible for the enforcement of EU consumer
protection laws. In order to protect consumers when shopping across national borders, Consumer
Protection Cooperation Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 established a network of competent public
enforcers to tackle these issues in a coordinated manner.

Thanks to the updated Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation (EU) 2017/2394, national
authorities now have stronger powers to detect irregularities and take speedy action against rogue
traders. If national consumer authorities work together at EU level, they save taxpayers’ money.

The cooperation is applicable to consumer rules covering various areas such as unfair commercial
practices, e-commerce, geo-blocking, package holidays, online selling, and passenger rights.

Strong powers for enforcers

National consumer authorities can order websites or social media accounts containing scams to be
corrected, obscured or removed. They can also request information from domain registrars, internet
service providers and banks to track financial flows and find out the identity of those behind bad
practices.

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 What can the authorities do when they get repeated complaints that an online shop is not
capable of delivering on time and refuses to pay consumers back?

Often the trader resonsible for such illegal practices is difficult to find, since they keep no permanent
office or warehouse. Their website may relocated to different EU countries several times. By
investigating their financial flow, this trader can be found faster. In the absence of cooperation from
the trader, the authority can order the website or account (e.g. in a social media platform) to be
closed. In such cases, consumers should also alert their credit card issuer to get their money back.

Authorities can accept commitments from traders

What can the authorities do when they get repeated complaints on websites offering free trial periods
but continuing the service as an unwanted subscription? Subscription traps: consumers are
regularly offered trial periods (e.g. in a dating website), or they are proposed to win a new expensive
phone. When consumers give their credit card details to access such offers, too often they later find
out that a membership cost is debited every month without them having given an informed consent.
Authorities get into contact with the trader in question, ask them commitments to clarify the
subscription conditions and withdrawal rights, and to stop the unwanted subscriptions.

Bigger role for the European Commission

The Commission can alert national authorities and coordinate their action to tackle practices which
harm a large majority of EU consumers. This is followed by negotiation with the businesses
concerned, directly at EU level. With the entry into application of the Directive (EU) 2019/2161 on
enforcement and modernisation of consumer law under the New Deal for Consumers the sanction
could reach at least 4% of the turnover of the businesses in the Member States concerned.

National and EU-level consumer protection actors can signal bad practices

European Consumer Centres, consumer and trade organisations are allowed to formally post alerts
about emerging market threats and their information will become directly useable by enforcement
authorities and the Commission.

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 Achievements of the CPC Network

The CPC Network has already dealt with several EU-wide issues such as:

Booking.com committed to make changes in the way it presents offers, discounts and
prices to consumers.

Airbnb improved and fully clarified the way it presents accommodation offers to
consumers, for example, to provide adequate and complete price information (including
all mandatory charges and fees).

Unfair terms in social media contracts: Facebook, Twitter and Google+ updated their
terms of services and implemented a dedicated procedure for consumer authorities to
signal problematic content.

Unclear conditions to rent cars: The five leading car rental companies — Avis, Europcar,
Enterprise, Hertz and Sixt — considerably improved the transparency of their offers and
handling of damages.

Apple iTunes and Google Play developed information on the existence and price of items
that can be purchased as part of games.

Further information on coordinated actions can be found here:

Coordinated actions

Hundreds of websites are regularly checked (“sweeps”) across the EU on whether they
comply with EU consumer law: airlines (2007), mobile content (2008), electronic goods
(2009), online tickets (2010), consumer credit (2011), digital contents (2012), travel
services (2013), guarantees on electronic goods (2014), consumer rights directive (2015),
comparison tools in the travel sector (2016), telecommunication- and other digital services (2017),
prices and discounts in online shopping (2018) and delivery conditions and withdrawal rights (2019).

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 After the sweep, each website found with an issue has to make corrections. This brings up the level
of compliance to higher level. Proceedings can be long, but in general, within one year the level of
compliance becomes satisfactory (graph below).

Further information on sweeps can be found here:

Sweeps

Percentage of swept websites compliant with EU consumer law before and after sweeps

An official website of the European Union How do you know?

*Enforcement phase is still ongoing (results of mid-Sept 2020)

CPC actors

Competent authorities are public authorities investigating and enforcing consumer law. Member
States have to designate at least one competent authority responsible for enforcing each Union law,
which is listed in the Annex of the CPC Regulation. They can decide to designate more competent
authorities in relation to the same legal act.

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 Single Liaison Office (SLO) is a public authority responsible for coordinating the investigation and
enforcement activities of the competent authorities and other CPC actors, if applicable. Each
Member State shall have one SLO.

Designated bodies may be instructed by competent authorities under the national laws to obtain
evidence or to take enforcement measures. The use of designated bodies depends on the national
laws of each Member State and its use needs to be agreed upon under the cooperation mechanism.

External entities are entities such as consumer and trade associations, the European Consumer
Centres, or designated bodies that can participate in the CPC alert mechanism. This power was
conferred on them by Member States or the Commission and they will be able to post alerts about
emerging market threats and their information will become directly accessible by enforcement
authorities.

You can find an up-to-date list of CPC actors below:

List of CPC single liaison offices and competent authorities

List of CPC designated bodies

! 18 January 2021
English (743.8 KB - PDF)
Url link - https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/designated_bodies_18jan2021.pdf

List of entities that can issue external alerts (national level)

! 18 March 2021
English (135.3 KB - PDF)
Url link - https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/2021-03-18-
list_of_entities_that_can_issue_external_alerts_national_level.pdf

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 List of entities that can issue external alerts (EU level)
! 03 October 2020
English (498.3 KB - PDF)
Url link -
https://ec.europa.eu/info/sites/default/files/live_work_travel_in_the_eu/consumers/documents/list_of_entit

Data protection

The CPC mechanism is supported by the Internal Market Information System that ensures secure
and user-friendly electronic environment for certain communication exchanges under the CPC
Regulation and Commission Implementing Decisions (EU) 2019/2213 and 2019/2212.

For personal data of IMI users, please see the Commission’s data protection record DPR-EC-
00373.2 and the privacy statement.

For personal data of data subjects being subject of or essential to cooperation exchanges under the
CPC mechanism, please see the Commission’s data protection record DPR-EC-05646.1 and the
privacy statement here.

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