Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-12-15-Speech-1-247"
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"en.20081215.22.1-247"2
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"This report was drawn up because the European Parliament received over 400 petitions from its citizens, namely from small enterprises who have fallen prey to advertising scams by being inserted in a commercial directory without wanting to. The victims would receive a form such as this one and be asked to fill it in, whilst being tricked into thinking they were signing up for a free mention in the directory. However, they would subsequently receive a letter and realise that they had unknowingly entered into a contract that binds them to a payment of around 1 000 euros for three years. This is what is happening to victims of these directories that we consider to be fraudulent. I would like to add that the company that owns the European City Guide directory is the most commonly mentioned in these petitions. It is worth noting that this company has also put considerable pressure on the Members of this Parliament in an attempt to put a stop to or undermine the reports that we are presenting today. Fortunately however, it did not succeed, despite the fact that it did not always provide us with the correct information. What were the results of this report? We discovered that there exists a very real problem, that it is widespread, and that it can be traced all over the European Union. What has also emerged is that this affects numerous small businesses as well as professionals and other individuals that do not necessarily own a company. We found that this problem affects companies transnationally, and that it has not only a strong financial impact, but also a serious psychological one on the victims of this sham, who are conned into signing this form and then later hounded by the company to follow up payment. What are we proposing in this report? Firstly, we draw up a list of measures in order to increase the level of awareness and therefore reduce the number of victims who fall into the trap in the first place. Secondly, we need to ensure that existing European legislation is enforced as it should be. It should be noted here that every time this issue was brought up with the Commission, it replied by saying that it was up to the discretion of the Member States to implement European Union legislation on a national level. We are aware of this discretion, but I would like to remind the Commission that it is the duty of the European Commission to ensure that European Union laws be implemented effectively in the Member States. We are also proposing that European laws be amended in order to better address this particular problem. We found, for example, that the Austrian model is an exemplary one because Austria changed its national legislation so as to have it apply specifically to this issue of fraudulent commercial directories. My final point concerns the need to assist the victims by advising them not to make any payments to these commercial directory companies until they have sought out proper advice. Before concluding I would sincerely like to thank the Petitions Committee for lending this report its unanimous support and I would also like to thank all my staff. Moreover, heartfelt thanks go out the committee’s secretary – Mr David Lowe. If the report is adopted it will send out two clear messages – first of all to the victims, in showing them that we understand their situation and are fully behind them, and, secondly, to these fraudulent commercial directory companies, where we would be warning them ‘put an end to your swindling practices at once, because Parliament is trailing you closely’."@en1
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