EU Cites Improved Consumer Conditions

Consumer conditions in many EU member countries have improved, according to the European Commission’s spring Consumer Scoreboard, made available May 29. The semiannual report, covering 2011 data in this edition, assesses how well the European market is doing, including in terms of consumer perception, enforcement indicators, and nations’ product safety activities.

Compared to 2010, the consumer figures represent a decline of 5% in perceptions about the safety of non-food products. Consumer perceptions of food products have remained relatively stable.

Perceptions of product safety vary greatly between European countries. While approximately half of consumers in Romania (56%) and Greece (47%) think that a significant number of non-food products on their respective national markets are unsafe, only a small margin of consumers in Finland (6%) and the Netherlands (7%) believe so.

Food safety follows a similar trend, with large percentages of consumers in Romania (56%), Lithuania (53%), and Greece (47%) believing that significant numbers of food products in their respective countries are unsafe. On the other end of the spectrum, only small minorities in Finland (3%) and the UK (6%) felt that significant numbers of food products in their respective countries were unsafe.

In recalls, 18% of European consumers in 2011 reported that they have at some time been personally affected by a recall, which represents an increase of three percentage points since 2010. The countries with the highest percentages of consumers who were personally affected by recalls were Greece (58%) and Cyprus (39%). The EC asserts that an increase in the number of consumers affected by product recalls is a positive trend, revealing that economic operators and authorities are working together in order to retrieve unsafe products from consumers.

Enforcement Indicators: Half of the retailers in Europe reported that national authorities had checked the safety of some of their products that they were selling in the past two years. The countries where retailers were most likely to be subject to product safety tests were Romania (84%), Belgium (84%), and Portugal (55%).

Most non-food retailers (79%) agreed that public sector authorities actively monitor and ensure compliance with product safety regulation in their sector. The nations where the largest number of retailers agreed with this statement were Romania (91%) and the UK (91%), while those with the lowest number of retailers in agreement were Malta (58%), and Greece, Estonia, and Poland (66% each).

Among retailers who sell food products, an even larger majority (87%) agreed that authorities actively monitored compliance with food safety legislation. The highest percentages of retailers who agreed were in Belgium (96%), Luxembourg (96%), Ireland (95%), and the UK (95%). On the other end of the spectrum were non-food retailers in Greece (72%), Malta (75%), and Germany (80%).

In addition to retailers’ perceptions of enforcement activities, member states have been collecting data since 2009 in order to measure the key activities of national authorities in charge of economic and product safety.

This initiative was launched following a successful pilot project in 2008, and the data has since been interpreted into two lists of 20 indicators designed to track the enforcement actions and capabilities of member states.

The lists of indicators reveal considerable variation in member states’ enforcement systems and how they operate. The Commission reported that they will continue to collect and monitor the indicators in order to help member states to develop best practices.

The indicators revealed that the countries that were the most active in 2010 regarding the number of inspections, adjusted for the number of retailers, were the Czech Republic (125,885), Slovakia (107,416), and Cyprus (12,181). In terms of the actual numbers of inspections performed, Denmark (53,216), Poland (23,616), and the Czech Republic (20,625) topped the list.

The countries most active regarding the number of products tested in labs, rescaled for the number of retailers in those countries, were Latvia (109), Germany (104), and Slovakia (85). In terms of total number of products tested in labs, the top countries in 2010 were Germany (28,057), the Netherlands (5,009), and France (3,076).

Product withdrawals from the market were most common in Denmark (1,202), the Czech Republic (463), and Poland (33), while the number of products recalled from consumers was highest in Denmark (411), Austria (200), and Sweden (199). Countries with the most decisions taken by customs authorities to suspend products at the border were Denmark (1,612), Bulgaria (1,484), and France (1,286).

Get the report from ec.europa.eu/consumers/consumer_research/editions/docs/7th_edition_scoreboard_en.pdf.