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Cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms in Europe – Practical reflections on the need and availability

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Table of contents

Introduction
Scope
Chapter 1 Alternative Dispute Resolution in the European Union
Chapter 2 The ECC-Network’s role in solving cross-border consumer complaints
Chapter 3 Statistical analysis of complaints received in the ECC-Network in 2007 and 2008
Chapter 4 Questionnaire results
Chapter 5 Country Overview
Conclusions and recommendations
Appendix 1
Appendix 2
Appendix 3
Appendix 4

Introduction

Cross-border trade within the EU is growing and there is a general consensus that this is a positive development since it means a wider choice of products and services as well as lower prices for consumers. But as cross-border trade is growing so are cross-border complaints.

If consumers are to have trust in cross-border trade they need to know that it is safe to shop in other EU-countries. And different remedies are already in place to help consumers solve their cross-border complaints, one of these being the European Consumer Centres Network (The ECC-Network).

The ECC-Network is an EU-wide network consisting of 29 centres, one in each EU member state together with a centre in both Iceland and Norway. The Network is co-financed by the Health and Consumer Protection Directorate General of the European Commission and by the member states. The main aim of the ECC-Network is to create consumer confidence in the Internal Market and assisting consumers with cross-border complaints is one of the key objectives of the network. Since 2007 the ECC-Network has systematically been registering complaints received in an online case handling system and data shows that the number of complaints has grown from 5,000 in 2007 to 6,500 in 2008 to estimated 8,000 in 2009. In other words an increase in the number of complaints of 60 % from 2007 to 2009.

With this network report we want to have a look at how likely consumers are to have their cross-border complaints solved today and which role alternative dispute resolution mechanisms (ADR) play in this. ADR we define as complaint handling mechanisms1 dealing with consumer complaints without involving the traditional court system.

Cooperation with and development of ADR are among the core objectives of the ECC Network and in the EU consumer policy strategy for 2007-2013 the use of ADR1 is mentioned as one of the ways to reach the goal of the consumer strategy that every EU-consumer should be able to shop from anywhere in the EU confident they are equally effectively protected.

Even though cross-border trade is growing it has the potential to grow much more in coming years so it is important to prepare for this by setting up systems being able to deal with cross-border complaints in an effective way. We hope with this report to be able to contribute to this.

A special thanks to Laine Vitola, former manager/adviser at European Consumer Centre Latvia, now ph.d. student at the University of Latvia, for all her help in preparing this report, especially chapters 3, 4 and 5.

Peter Fogh Knudsen, director, ECC Denmark, pfk@forbrugereuropa.dk
Piotr Stanczak, director, ECC Poland, piotr.stanczak@konsument.gov.pl
Federico Vicari, director, ECC Italy, federico.vicari@ecc-netitalia.it
Elisabetta Sciallis, lawyer, ECC UK, elisabetta@tsi.org.uk

Noter:

1) Meeting the two existing recommendations, Commission Recommendation 98/257/EC of 30 March 1998 on the principles applicable to the bodies responsible for out-of-court settlement of consumer disputes, and Commission Recommendation 2001/310/EC of 4 April 2001 on the principles for out-of-court bodies involved in the consensual resolution of consumer disputes.

Scope

The purpose of this report is:

  1. To analyse the number of complaints received in the ECC-Network in 2007 and 2008 and the outcome of these cases to the extent that they have been closed by the end of 2007/2008
  2. To analyse the existence of ADR in a cross-border context and how ECCs are working together with ADR in dealing with cross-border complaints
  3. To identify the product/service-specific areas where each ECC receives the most cross-border complaints today against traders in its country
  4. To suggest recommendations for possible improvements in the dealing of cross-border complaints

Each member of the European Consumer Centres Network has participated in this joint project which means that the report covers 29 countries. Countries such as Bulgaria, Romania, Slovenia and Slovakia are the newest members of the ECC-Network and therefore the numbers of received complaints in their centres are not yet very big as well as ADR activity is not very high.

Data has been collected in two ways:

  1. statistical data concerning the number of complaints and the outcome of the cases has been provided by the European Commission which collected the data from the so-called it-tool, the common online case-handling system used by all ECCs to register all complaints received in the network
  2. a questionnaire asking for additional information not registered in the it-tool has been answered by all ECCs (the questionnaire can be found in Appendix 1)

The way data has been collected presents some limitations. Only complaints received and registered by the European Consumer Centres are analyzed, the way complaints are registered may vary to some extent from centre to centre and regarding the distributed questionnaire not all ECCs have been able to answer all questions. This should be kept in mind throughout the report.

The following terms are referred to throughout the report:

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E-mail: info@forbrugereuropa.dk
Websted: www.consumereurope.dk

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This page is the front page for the publication "Cross-border dispute resolution mechanisms in Europe".
Version nr. 1.0 af 22-03-2010
© European Consumer Centre Denmark 2010