Consumer Policy in 28 EU Member States: An Empirical Assessment in Four Dimensions

Abstract

This article examines consumer policy in 28 EU Member States. It introduces a new methodological framework and several indicators to analyse legal, social, enforcement, and associational dimensions of consumer policy. Drawing on the most recent data, the empirical results provide a detailed picture of consumer policy across Europe displayed in several indices. The results furthermore allow for statistically testing consumer policy regimes, as suggested by previous research. These indices reveal great differences between individual countries but only few instances of statistically significant differences between consumer policy regimes. Considering legal and political accounts as well as sociological explanations that have not yet been applied, possible explanations for these findings are discussed. It is concluded that comparative consumer policy analysis should further analyse differences between individual European countries in several dimensions and should not only account for consumer policy regimes from a legal or a political science perspective. The methodological framework and the theoretical explanations outlined in this article may help to accomplish this goal.

Understanding National Preferences in EU Consumer Policy: A Regime Approach

“…Differences between countries and groups of countries can be investigated in several ways. Both Repo and Timonen (2017) and Nessel (2019) have used p values from tests for equality of means. This approach is of limited value when investigating the data from the open public consultation, both because of the limited amount of unique replies and more importantly because the p value is an indicator of the probability that the difference between the population means is at least as large as what has been observed in the sample.…”

“…The above-mentioned classifications, as well as established country categorizations provided by the European Commission (e.g., European Commission 2014), are therefore used as a starting point for making a complete categorization of EU and EEA countries according to consumer policy regimes. Based on these previous classifications, the review of regime approaches to studies of consumer policy by Nessel (2019) and the classifications made by Repo and Timonen (2017) when analysing regime market performance, this article distinguishes six consumer policy regimes. This classification is used as a starting point for investigating similarities and differences, i.e., potentially shared ideas, between countries in their position to key issues in EU consumer policy.…”

“…Furthermore, the classification do, to a certain extent, cover the previously mentioned key dimensions distinguishing country preferences in EU decision-making, such as the geographical and the regulatory versus market-based dimension. Nevertheless, there are many limitations connected with the existing classifications and it has been argued that the legal and political science perspective only contribute to explain some differences between consumer policies in individual countries (Nessel 2019). On this background, this research also takes an exploratory approach to the investigation of potential regime differences and potential reasons for such differences, in preferences in EU consumer policy through the stakeholder interviews.…”

“…Despite different objectives and scientific perspectives, these studies have identified various European consumer policy regimes that to varying extents incorporate the key variables identified in international relation studies on the formation of states' preferences and positions in negotiations. The regimes are classified based on differences in how consumer interest have been institutionalized (Trumbull 2006a(Trumbull , 2006b(Trumbull , 2012, on differences in legal tradition or enforcement tradition (Cseres 2005;Cafaggi and Micklitz 2009;Micklitz 2003), or a combination of these (Nessel 2019;Repo and Timonen 2017). 1 One of the latest examples is the negotiations on the European Commission's amended proposal for a directive on certain aspects concerning contracts for the sales of goods, where a key suggested change was to provide for maximum harmonization and thereby prohibiting Member States from introducing a higher level of consumer protection than envisaged in the directive (European Commission 2017a).…”

“…Given that the consumer policy regimes incorporate key variables often found to determine countries' preferences in international negotiations, and the claimed continuity of regimes, it can be hypothesized that it is possible to identify differences between the consumer policy regimes when it comes to preferences in EU consumer policy. However, recent research argues that, perhaps due to the efforts by the European Commission to harmonize EU consumer policy, the regime approach is of little value for understanding differences in European consumer policy today (Nessel 2019;Strünck 2005).…”