EU Competition Project 2005-2007

Consumers International is managing a newEU Competition   Project on competition in collaboration with partner   organisations from 14 European Union (EU) countries.

The project will span two years and is supported by a grant from the European Union DG SANCO and other sources.

Consumers and Competition

Consumers have a strong interest in effective competition policy and regulation. Rules are needed to control anti-competitive behaviour in all market economies, whatever their mix of private and state enterprise, to ensure lower prices, better choice and quality, and access to essential goods and services. Competition policy and regulation has become even more important in recent years.

The primacy of market forces as the source of consumer welfare has been promoted through deregulation and privatisation. This provides more opportunities for abuse as well as benefit. In addition, surging cross-border mergers and acquisitions have extended opportunities for price and distribution fixing by cartels. It has also led to concerns that the power of transnational corporations (TNCs) threatens market diversity and competition by cramping domestic production, investment and innovation, particularly in developing countries.

Though much of the response to cross-border mergers and acquisitions will be based on the work of national competition authorities, international collaboration is necessary.

Consumers International recognises that some anti-competitive actions by corporations can only be dealt with by common action by two or more - often many - national competition agencies.

There is consensus within the consumer movement that multilateral competition frameworks are vital for dealing with restrictive business practices in the context of advances in global economic integration.

The primary goal of this project “A consumer analysis of the retail market in 14 EU Member States” is to measure how competition affects consumer welfare in the European Internal Market.

Specifically, the project objective is to increase the capacity and expertise of European Union (EU) consumer organisations to undertake data collection and market surveillance into competition within the retail distribution sector in order to enhance competition and competition policy-making processes. This will enable organisations to increase their expertise in market investigations from a consumer welfare perspective.

Specific objectives of the project are to:

1.-Enhance the capacity of consumer organisations to undertake consumer research into price, choice and accessibility within the retail distribution sector.

2.- Build expertise in consumer organisations to analyse competition policies, law and investigations at the national and European Community (EC) level from a consumer perspective.

3.- Increase consumer organisations' ability to analyse and advocate a consumer welfare analysis of competition to competition authorities at national and EC level.