Press releases

New guidelines issued to financial institutions will offer some welcome breathing space to consumers who have been hit financially by the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2019, more than 2,000 notifications of non-food products were made to the EU’s rapid alert system (Safety Gate) as failing safety requirements. Each notification may represent thousands of faulty products. Toys, motor vehicles and electrical appliances were the product groups with most notifications. The figure could well be an undercount, as many dangerous products are possibly not identified.

BEUC applauds the European Commission’s decision to launch infringement proceedings today against ten countries (Czech Republic, Cyprus, Greece, France, Italy, Croatia, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal and Slovakia), for breaching EU law on reimbursement for cancelled travel due to Covid-19.

The EU institutions approved a law which would allow citizens in all EU countries to go to court as a group if they have suffered the same damage. Consumer groups have been advocating for such a law for more than 30 years.