Press releases

The European Commission has today proposed a weak reform of the agencies that supervise financial services at European level. It is bewildering that the proposal still limits the agencies’ role in protecting consumers, which is mostly devolved to national level where protection standards vary enormously. The reform means the agencies will continue to subordinate consumer protection to considerations about the stability of the financial sector.

The European Consumer Organisation (BEUC) undertook a consumer performance check of the first two-and-a-half years of the Juncker Commission.1 We looked at the Commission’s legislative initiatives and its key policy actions and graded their performance on a scale from very good to very bad.

Today the European Commission unveiled plans to address the unnecessarily high costs consumers face when they are abroad and are offered to pay in either the local currency or their own, which is known as Dynamic Currency Conversion (DCC) [1]. The EU executive arm is also looking to reduce the high fees consumers are usually charged when they make cross-border payments between euro and non-euro currencies. BEUC strongly supports action in both areas and is calling for an outright ban of DCC.

With the Brexit talks about to start, EU consumer groups have outlined how the interests of EU and UK consumers should be protected during the negotiations. The European Consumer Organisation and its members want any decisions related to the United Kingdom’s exit from the EU, and its subsequent relationship, to be assessed against the impact on consumers.