Towards a Single European Market? The Evolution of the Leasing Industry

It is argued that completion of the internal market for leasing requires sufficient openness of national markets for competition between rules to take place. This study of the leasing industry in the European Economic Area analyses those aspects of the European Commission’s Single Market Programme which are intended to achieve this aim and pinpoints tax harmonisation, banking regulation and mutual recognition of accounting standards as the main areas of Commission regulatory activity which will impact on the evolution of rules for the industry. The paper looks at the structure of the national industries and highlights the constraints and driving forces within the various rule systems which will influence the process of change. It is concluded that relatively high levels of competition between rules are actually occurring. In the long term, national markets will continue to be segmented and it is questionable whether a European leasing industry will actually emerge     

Zielsetzungen und Instrumentarien der europäischen Verbraucherrechtspolitik: Eine Analyse von Entwicklungen im Bereich des Zivilrechts

Objectives and instruments of European consumer policy: An analysis of developments in the area of civil law. The paper discusses the relationships and conflicts between the objectives pursued by European consumer policy and the means which are at its disposal. As a first step, the theoretical assumptions of this policy are analysed by an evaluation of the EC Programme for a Consumer Protection and Information Policy of 1975 and of the draft directives on product liability, on misleading and unfair competition, on doorstep sales, and on correspondence courses. It is suggested that the European approach toward consumer protection largely corresponds to the policies prevailing at the national level: Consumer protection is seen as a supplement to the traditional market and competition policy which used to be restricted to regulating competition between producers or suppliers of goods and services, whereas the new policy focuses on the relations between producers and consumers. Nevertheless, consumer policy adheres to the basic presumptions of market economy. It presupposes that the demands of the consumer have to be articulated and satisfied via market processes. It therefore primarily relies on regulations directed against misleading advertising, on protecting justified expectations as to the quality of goods or services by providing redress for losses sustained, and by endeavours aimed at securing a more rational behaviour of the individual consumer. The most important means to promote this policy on the European level are the directives which aim at consonance among national laws (Art. 100 EC Treaty). This is indicative of a market orientation of consumer policy in so far as the harmonization of law is seen as a device for overcoming discriminating effects or distortions of competition created by the differences among national laws thereby furthering a better functioning of the Common Market (Art. 3 h EC Treaty). This accordance of consumer policy and harmonization policy does not rest on firm ground, however. In consumer policy it becomes more and more obvious that the efforts to protect the interests of the consumer lead to further interventionist activities. This process also reveals the need for systematic adjustments or consultations between consumer policy and other fields of politics. A harmonization policy which is primarily centered on breaking down trade barriers and on overcoming discriminating effects of competition cannot respond to the needs and problems of such interventionist activities. Therefore, the harmonization of consumer law should be conceived as a process of formulating broader policies directed at a congruous development of the economic sphere and at an improvement of the living conditions in the Common Market (cf. Art. 2 and the preamble of the EC Treaty). Legal techniques which might be adopted to support such an orientation are (a) in the EC directives to lay down minimum standards for the national legislation, (b) to use a conflict-of-laws approach which would allow to respect and try to coordinate legitimate interests in the application of national consumer policies, and (c) the development of special rules responding to the international aspects of the exchange between producers and consumers. At present, however, European policy gives hardly any attention to the chances and problems of such an approach requiring a complicated coordination of the various legal techniques.     

Banking regulation in the European union: Some issues and concerns

Banking regulation and supervision in the EU today has to be conducted in accordance with the Single Market legislation promulgated by the European Commission. The creation of a European Single Market in financial services, which was provided for in the Treaty of Rome of 1957 and in the Single European Act of July 1987 which revised it, was originally planned for completion by the end of 1992, although the final pieces of the jigsaw were not in place until the beginning of 1996. This article explains what the European Single Market in financial services represents, the rationale for it, and the measures, including the use of legally binding Directives, adopted to deliver it on the banking front. It concludes with a discussion and analysis of some of the issues and concerns which implementation of the Single Market program for banking services has given rise to, with special emphasis being placed on the evolution of minimum capital standards for banks.     

Consumer input in standardization: a case study of toy safety

Abstract

Ever since the ‘new approach’ to the achievement of the Internal Market was adopted, the importance of European Standardization has increased. The standardization institutes are now responsible for the technical elaboration of requirements touching upon health and safety of consumers. Therefore, it is of major importance for consumer movements to have an input in the process. In this study, the consumer interest articulation in the ‘new approach’ policy-making process is looked into. The role consumer organizations play in both the pre-standardization and the actual standardization stage are dealt with. Toy safety is taken as a case-study, and the information for the research was mainly gathered from interviews with about 30 representatives of European and national consumer movements, government agencies and industry involved in this field

The study shows that the influence of consumers in the pre-standardization stage, when a directive is drafted and a mandate negotiated between the European Commission and the standardization institutes, is limited

As concerns the standardization stage, consumers have representation in technical committees and working groups of the European standardization institutes. The participation of European and national representatives is compared

The main findings of this research are that consumer input in the actual standardization process is crucial, since their input in the pre-standardization phase is limited. In addition to this, the European and the national consumer representatives are not equally successful in assuring consumer input in this particular policy area. The causes for this difference are considered.     

Ein Arbeitsmarktprogramm für Europa

The European Employment Strategy is the subject of controversial discussion. It is hard to find an economic justification for transnational responsibility since European labour markets are heterogenous and spillover effects of national employment policies are almost negligible. In its latest communication, the European Commission fails to provide a masterplan for a recovery of the struggling labour markets, although it provides convincing and less convincing proposals for tackling unemployment in EU member states. There is a suspicion that the package mainly serves as a first step towards transferring employment policy responsibilities from the national to the EU level. But the EU labour market policy lacks appropriate instruments and competences. Finally, it is questionable whether the package fits in an economic growth plan.     

金融全球化与金融监管:动因、挑战与问题——基于新兴市场经济国家的分析

金融全球化的动因是放松管制和技术进步,引起了金融机构和市场结构的巨大变化。新兴市场经济国家因此面临许多新的金融监管问题：新的监管需求,传统监管方法的局限性．处理金融竞争方法的调整,消费者保护,监管成本的控制,监管协调等。新兴市场经济国家需要进一步面对跨国金融活动、国际金融标准和监管执行力的挑战。     

Detours on the Path to a European Big Data Economy

As envisioned by the European Commission, national boundaries are supposed to disappear under the Digital Single Market. Many small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) are not aware of the significant potentials and promises of big data for their business activities and models.     

Large banks' efficiency in the single European market

This paper examines cost and profit efficiency of large banking firms by defining a common European frontier over the period immediately following the completion of the Single Market Programme in 1992. Despite a slight increase in cost efficiency, country-specific characteristics appear to play important roles in the explanation of cost efficiency scores and significant differences, including varying competitive conditions, seem to exist across European banking markets. In contrast, results derived from the estimation of an alternative profit function seem to suggest that the efficiency gap among countries decreased substantially over the years under study.     

Making the Market Work: Enhancing Consumer Sovereignty Through the Telemarketing Sales Rule and the Distance Selling Directive

This article analyzes the provisions of the Telemarketing Sales Rule, which the Federal Trade Commission promulgated in 1995 pursuant to the 1994 Telemarketing and Consumer Fraud and Abuse Prevention Act. The author proposes a framework through which the Rule may be understood as embodying a regulatory strategy of controlling abusive telemarketing by enhancing the effectiveness of market forces. In particular, the Rule works by improving the quantity and quality of information flowing to consumers, preventing the occurrence of transactions that the consumer does not truly intend, preventing telemarketers from evading the effects of market forces governing availability of payment mechanisms, and enhancing the effectiveness of the contract regime.The article then applies the same framework to the 1997 Distance Selling Directive of the European Union, yielding several recommendations that EU member countries may find useful when transposing the Directive into national law. The author also discusses some of the special considerations that EU member countries should take account of when transposing the Directive's requirements in the context of electronic commerce.     

Kapitalmarktunion — bisher hohe Persistenz der Finanzsysteme

In 2015, the European Commission announced that it would push to create a European wide capital market union to support economic growth and financial stability in Europe. The agenda of the EU Commission is ambitious, because the success of such a plan would transform the European financial systems, most of which are still much more reliant on banks than on financial markets, as opposed to the US, for example. A cluster analysis shows, however, that national financial systems are resistant to change, which can only be implemented in the long run. Nevertheless, the past 20 years have seen financial markets gaining more importance for all economies.     

The Outlook for European Grocery Retailing: Competition and Format Development

This article analyses retail trends in the main European countries, and particularly format evolution and competition amongst retailing firms. On the basis of the existence of European retailing landscapes that are sometimes similar without ever being identical, the article analyses the impact of the main factors of change on different national markets. Whilst retail internationalisation and new entrants, commercial policy, legislative environments, technological innovations, consumers and buying behaviour will have a convergence effect on different countries' retail structures, substantial differences will still exist. European retailing in the coming years will probably be characterized by increasingly less marked differences between countries than one finds today, but market segmentation, variety and differentiation of retailing formats and brand names will be stronger within each country.     

Consumer Law and Policy in Kenya

This contribution seeks to examine the consumer protection law and policy in Kenya with a view to understand how consumer issues, such as product safety and product liability, are addressed as well as the remedies for defective goods. It also seeks to understand the available provisions on the safety standards of consumer products, such as mobile phones, by highlighting the consumer issues that arise for mobile phone users with particular reference to the services provided by mobile network operators (MNOs) – i.e., the financial services and products – and how the consumer protection regime has addressed them. It will conclude by examining how the Kenyan consumer law has manifested itself, either by its influence on other states’ consumer laws and policies or the way(s) in which its own laws have been influenced by foreign and supranational consumer laws. References will be made with regard to the influence by the European Commission (EC) Product Safety Directive, the EC Product Liability Directive, the EC Consumer Sales Directive and the EC Unfair Commercial Practices Directive. Furthermore, this contribution will highlight the challenges encountered with respect to the achievement of a consumer protection regime in Kenya, as a result of the fragmentation of the law and policies.     

Defending the Consumer's Right to a Clean Environment in the Face of Globalisation. The Case of Extraterritorial Environmental Protection Under European Community Law

The issue of extraterritorial eco-protection provides an excellent illustration of unresolved tensions deep-rooted within Community policy and law as regards protecting the environment and the consumer. On the one hand, the EC has predicated itself traditionally on the free market model of consumer welfare, which perceives social progress to be indissolubly linked with open markets characterised by free competitive forces, exemplified by the "single market" ideal. Extraterritorial protective measures represent a considerable challenge to this orthodoxy. They not only question the notion that frictionless interstate trade should be the ultimate trump card, but also dispute the notion that a private individual should only have influence or ownership over concerns about the environment directly related to that person's "home" or "domestic" territory, such as the state of nationality or residence.Extraterritorial measures imply a post-national vision of politics, a vision which the EC in its current form does not share. However, by virtue of the major changes made to the Treaty of Rome 1957 (EC Treaty) due to the Single European Act 1986 (SEA), the Treaty on European Union 1992 (TEU), and most recently the Treaty of Amsterdam 1997 (ToA), the EC has committed itself to incorporating a strong environmental protection dimension to its traditional core aims related to market integration. These new commitments lend support to ideas and policies enhancing the status of measures designed to prioritise ecological values, including potentially extraterritorial measures on environmental protection.     

The Economic Approach to European State Aid Control: A Politico-Economic Analysis

Since the mid-2000s, the European Commission has employed a so-called ‘more economic approach’ to European state aid control. Under this modified regime, the Commission checks not only whether a state aid has competition-distorting effects, but in addition, whether it enhances social welfare. This reform implies an extension of the Commission’s competences vis-à-vis the Member States as the Commission gets the power to prohibit national state aid regarded as socially wasteful. The Commission explains its reform with the necessity of giving state aid control a sound economic basis. This article, however, demonstrates that the more economic approach – somewhat paradoxically – is not based on a consistent economic view of public policy that would justify the aforementioned shift of competences to the supranational EU level. The economic-theoretical inconsistencies identified in this article may be used by policymakers to rethink some elements of current EU state aid policy.     

Access to justice and consumer redress within a Single Market

The Single Market formula which equates the consumer interest with wider choice and lower costs ignores the potency of other competing factors which influence consumer behaviour. Access to information and advice and to redress mechanisms, and adequate levels of compensation, will increasingly inform the purchasing decisions of consumers.EC-wide co-operation and coordination are vital to ensure that existing disparities in the levels of consumer protection are reduced. This is only likely to occur within the context of a coherent policy which addresses the key issues of access to courts and alternative redress systems.

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Der Rechtszugang für Verbraucher innerhalb des Gemeinsamen Marktes

Zusammenfassung Wird im Zusammenhang mit dem Gemeinsamen Markt das Verbraucherinteresse mit grö\erer Wahlfreiheit und geringeren Kosten gleichgesetzt, so werden andere wichtige Einflu\faktoren des Konsumentenverhaltens übersehen. Der Zugang zur Information und Beratung und zu Schadenersatz-Mechanismen, sowie angemessene Ausgleichshöhe Access to Justice and Consumer Redress 415 werden die Kaufentscheidungen im zunehmenden Ma\e beeinflussen. EG-weite Kooperation und Koordination sind unverzichtbar, wenn es darum geht, Ungleichheiten im Niveau des Schutzes von Verbrauchern zu vermindern. Es wird nur gelingen, wenn eine kohÄrente Politik die zentralen Themen des Rechtszuganges und alternativer Ausgleichssysteme anpackt.

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Consumers in the European Community Group (CECG), an umbrella body for 31 UK organisations. CECG carries out research on the effects of EC policies and proposals on UK consumers and represents the collective views of its membership to Government, the Commission, the UK and European Parliaments, the Economic and Social Committee, and other EC advisory committees.     

Legitimierung,oder das demokratische Dilemma der Euro-Rettungspolitik

European policies imposed in the euro crisis have disabled democratic policy choices at the national level, while the present European euro-rescuing regime lacks democratic legitimacy. But policy choices might now become politicised in the Europe-wide competition of partisan candidates for the Presidency of the European Commission. In that case, voters might indeed be mobilised for or against radically opposed policy options — the continuation of the present austerity regime and the move to a transfer union. The risk is, however, that the escalation of transnational conflict might further divide rather than democratise Europe.     

The COVID-19 pandemic and financial markets in Central Europe: Macroeconomic measures and international policy spillovers

This paper investigates the effects of macroeconomic policy announcements on financial markets in three Central European economies: Czechia, Hungary, and Poland (CE–3). We focus on the unprecedented stabilisation policies implemented from March to December 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, including unconventional monetary measures and large stimulus programs. Detailed categories of monetary and fiscal measures are introduced into vector autoregressions with exogenous regressors and dynamic conditional correlations, which we estimate using daily data. This allows us to control for policy spillovers from abroad, as well as global risk factors and pandemic-related variables. We find that, in general, macroeconomic policy measures implemented in the CE–3 countries played an important role in stabilising financial markets during the pandemic. We uncover several notable patterns in the reaction of markets to anti-crisis measures across the region. The impact of the monetary policy announcements on 10-year sovereign bond yields was more substantial than on stock market returns and exchange rate returns. The communication of the unconventional tools proved effective in lowering the bond yields. Interestingly, we document that the effects of non-standard measures for some variables, such as the exchange rate, can be qualitatively different from those resulting from a conventional monetary expansion. Even though the domestic monetary events became more important than the fiscal ones, the latter proved relevant for financial market returns, especially when large-scale immediate fiscal measures and tax deferrals were introduced. We also show that the CE–3 economies were subject to the cross-border transmission of policy announcement effects from the Euro Area and the US, although the magnitude of these effects was smaller than expected and varied across the CE–3 countries.     

Food Safety Issues,Trade and WTO Rules: A Developing Country Perspective

The SPS Agreement and the related WTO dispute settlement mechanism are an important first step in strengthening the global trade architecture, bringing in greater transparency and orderly conditions to world food trade. However, implementation of the new trade rules has turned out to be a more complex task than the traditional market access issues handled by the WTO. Several factors, including inadequate financial and technical resources, have constrained devel‐oping countries from becoming effective participants in the implementation process, and there is widespread suspicion that SPS regulations are being used as hidden protectionist devices by developed countries. However, despite all the problems, some developing countries have been quite successful in penetrating developed country food markets; they have done so by accepting the consumer preferences and standards in quality‐sensitive high‐income markets and implementing domestic supply‐side measures. While making full use of available international assistance initiatives, developing countries should view the task of complying with SPS standards not just as a barrier but also as an opportunity to upgrade quality standards and market sophistication in the food export sector.     

From Grand Policy to Targeted Destruction: Consumers as Victims of EU Satellite Television Policy

In July 1997 the European Commission proposed a "Directive on the Legal protection of Service based on, or consisting of Conditional Access" (to various electronic systems).This paper considers the proposed Directive within the context of the European Union's failure to develop and maintain a coherent policy relating to satellite television broadcasts direct to the individual's home (DTH) within the nascent Single European Market (SEM), and the consequences of that policy failure for "ordinary" consumers who are highly unlikely to have a full understanding of the complex technical, legal and economic environment in which they are making their purchase(s).The paper illustrates how the failure to develop a SEM in DTH resulted in a fragmented market in which the frustrated demand for DTH programmes stimulated the growth of a quasi-legal or illegal markets in goods and services. Faced with legislative failure, companies have increasingly attempted to protect their perceived economic interests through an increasingly sophisticated "techno-war" in which ethical considerations relating to consumers found in the "normal market" appear to have been largely abandoned.The proposed Directive may be viewed as an attempt by interested elements of capital to harness European law to resolve a problem created by their own failure to fully observe European law. The proposed Directive is an indication of the failure to control the broadcasting environment by other means, and the paper gives consideration to the ethics of this development.Whilst the paper's prime is on DTH within the United Kingdom, consideration is also given to the wider EU (for consistency and simplicity the term EU is used throughout this paper).Because of the commercial relationships involved, and the questionable legality of some behaviour, it is not possible to identify all sources precisely. Much of the information has been gathered from formal and informal discussions and investigation, and information has frequently been provided on the clear understanding that the precise source cannot be identified.     

Policy implications

Abstract: In the European Union, the framework of financial services legislation at EU level has been aimed primarily at forming a single market for banks, insurers and other financial services firms. Substantial progress has been made towards this objective. Also, the EU initiatives have stimulated a reappraisal of national regulatory systems. Most of this EU legislation (with the exception of the consumer credit directives) has not had consumer protection as one of its main aims, although it has been assumed that consumers will eventually benefit from a wide choice of financial services providers and from price competition. However, partly in response to consumer pressure, the European Commission is developing a set of initiatives more closely geared to protecting consumers’ interests. Within the context of the EU’s approach, there remain considerable variations in the approach to protecting consumers’ interests in different member states as a result of legal and cultural differences.