| EU CONSUMER POLICY Letter - Barroso acknowledges ECRC, shows interest in its work and invites us for more participation. Conference on Financial Education for 2007 announced. Important questions are still open. |
Following the (annexed) letter ECRC sent to the president of the Commission asking him to comment on consumer policy competences in financial services within the Commission, a reply to the letter has finally been received by ECRC which we estimate overall encouraging. After the nearly total disregard of social stakeholders in the ongoing process of banking policy formulation in Brussels the Commission seems to have drawn consequences from some grass root reactions in the member states.
LISTEN MORE
In this letter the Commission expresses its commitment to listening more closely to representatives of social stakeholders in this area but insists that the institutions founded by the Commission itself with its own criteria of representatives should dominate this process. Furthermore the Commission defends its exclusive vocation to issue a consumer letter on financial services ("Fin-Focus") and offers no support for parallel efforts in the NGO field.
In this respect the letter says:
"Furthermore, I would like to point out that group membership is not restricted to ECCG members only, but rather to organisations nominated by ECCG members as being the best placed in their respective member states to fulfil the above-mentioned objectives of the FSCG. As a result, a number of the organisations nominated to participate in the FSCG are also those who participate in the work of the European Coalition for Responsible Credit. We value the input that these parties will give to the continued work of the group and their contribution in the area of consumer credit. However, the FSCG will address a wide variety of financial services issues, and as such we feel that it is justified that the profile of its members not only reflect interest and expertise in the area of consumer credit, but also other issues affecting consumers, such as insurance and pensions, bank accounts, payments and investments."
FINANCIAL EDUCATION CONFERENCE 2007: WILL THE COMMISSION COORDINATE ITS OWN EFFORTS?
The Commission also invites ECRC to its 2007 conference on consumer capability which will be dedicated to financial education. This issue will be very sensible for the public because DG SANCO has recently made public website for education in financial services where specialists of online education instead of specialists in financial education got the chance to demonstrate what basic knowledge for consumers would be to cope with the threats of an untamed internal market on financial services. We will comment on these agglomeration of scattered information where the relevance of these multilingual platform is difficult to assess and where many errors especially where consumer rights are concerned have been translated in all EU languages.
On the other hand DG Social Policy is quite active in financial education and debt prevention with several initiatives. The announcement of DG Internal Market to hold a conference under a quite new title of "consumer capability" instead of financial education will show how consumer issues in this area will be co-ordinated by the president of the Commission. Those DGs in charge of the educational sector should also look at this project of DG Market which touches on education, culture, consumer protection and social welfare,
COMMISSION'S ATTENDANCE AT THE ECRC CONFERENCE 2007 - RATIONAL CHOICE!
The part of the letter concerning the absence from our ECRC 2006 conference while attending all conferences on these issues where banks dominated the audience and agenda is not very convincing. If as the letter says..
"I must point out that President Barroso and his fellow Commissioners, as well as representatives of the respective services, are invited to participate in a large number of events, often very far in advance, and unfortunately are simply not able to respond positively to all of these requests."
…the question is a basic consumer question: good choice! This should at least be a pluralistic choice. Our invitation for September 2007 close to the Commission's building is this time surely early enough.
We annex this letter and the ones sent by ECRC below. |
| ID: |
37707 |
| Autor(en): |
iff |
| Erscheinungsdatum: |
18.07.06 |
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Erzeugt: 26.06.06. Letzte Änderung: 20.07.06.
Information zum Urheberrecht der angezeigten Inhalte kann beim Institut für Finanzdienstleistungen erfragt werden. Aus fehlenden Angaben kann kein Recht zur freien Nutzung der Inhalte abgeleitet werden. |
