Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2002-07-03-Speech-3-198"
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"en.20020703.6.3-198"2
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". – Mr President, first I would like to thank the rapporteur, Mr Medina Ortega and the members of the Committees on Legal Affairs and the Internal Market on the Environment, Public Health and Consumer policy for all their helpful work on this issue.
I have recently been informed that a European trade association has taken legal action against certain holiday clubs in Spain for violation of Spanish timeshare law. The association in question has provided information to the public authorities on dishonest practices, which have subsequently been investigated. Several holiday club companies have been closed within the past few weeks and their principals have been arrested as part of the investigation.
Thus a more systematic cooperation between the industry and the relevant contact points in the Member States could and should be encouraged. Such cooperation should aim to identify companies with which problems have arisen and against which enforcement action can be taken.
The Commission will therefore draw on the experience of the European centres, the Euro-Guichets, and work with the newly established clearing houses of the European Extra-Judicial Network and with the International Marketing Supervision Network to address current outstanding problems and encourage them to cooperate closely with the industry.
Specifically, the points that have been raised by Mrs Wallis in relation to access to justice are of significance and the cross-border nature of that problem is highlighted by her, in my opinion rightly.
Our proposal contained in the follow-up paper on fair trading specifically refers to the need for law enforcement cooperation among Member States. In our consultation process with Member States and others, there was a very strong response to that part of the paper focusing on enforcement cooperation. With this in view, it is the intention of the Commission to bring forward a specific proposal in relation to that particular issue by the end of this year or the beginning of next year.
Furthermore issues such as reciprocal injunctive powers between Member States would also, in my view, be of significance and could be effective. In effect, EU-wide contract and consumer law needs to be looked at, which we are doing in my DG at the moment, as I am sure many of you are aware, and we will bring forward proposals in that area also in due course I hope sooner rather than later.
These are our plans but if, after taking action as I have outlined, problems still remain that cannot be solved by these actions, I will not hesitate to review the timeshare directive as indicated in the consumer policy strategy recently adopted by the Commission.
I take the timeshare issue very seriously. Transactions are almost exclusively cross-border and often involve very significant sums of money. It is, therefore, essential that we aim to provide a high level of protection for consumers in this field. The present EU directive has made a significant contribution to consumers' rights, establishing minimum harmonisation. However, I am well aware that a number of consumer protection problems still exist. This, in my view, is not due to the transposition of the directive, the Commission has already withdrawn all the infringement procedures in relation to that – but to its application. Therefore, more needs to be done.
Consumers can be vulnerable to several problems when they buy rights to use immovable properties on a timeshare basis. Firstly, certain unscrupulous vendors and agents use aggressive marketing techniques, which either mislead or place undue influence on consumers so as to induce them to buy, often to their detriment.
Secondly, new practices have emerged under which timeshare deals are offered through certain packages such as club points schemes or shares in a company, which effectively circumvents the obligations stipulated by the directive.
As a result, consumers miss out on access to the required level of information and on cooling-off periods.
I attach great importance to your resolution. Its conclusions, together with the Council's conclusions and the reactions to the 1999 Commission report on the implementation of the directive provide a solid basis for further action.
Furthermore, I am sure you will agree that we need to act immediately given the numerous complaints that our institutions have received on this issue. I believe that the more general problems could be tackled within the context of a framework directive on fair trading.
Further harmonisation of laws is necessary to achieve a uniform, high level of consumer protection throughout the EU. This is outlined in the follow-up communication to the Green Paper on consumer protection, which has just been adopted by the Commission. The marketing practices which could be tackled using this approach include those based on misleading claims or failure to disclose material information to consumers prior to the conclusion of the contract, those involving harassment, coercion or intimidatory techniques and those relating to after-sales customer assistance.
In addition, in order to address the most urgent problems, we should establish links with leading associations and members of the timeshare industry in order to make self-regulation more effective. The timeshare codes of conduct could be used to raise standards and to address those unfair and opaque practices not caught by the directive."@en1
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