BRUSSELS, Feb 16 (Reuter) - It may be a case of seller beware in future if European Commission plans floated on Friday to give buyers of faulty goods across the European Union cheaper access to courts bear fruit. Consumer Affairs Commissioner Emma Bonino said she was proposing a unified complaint form for consumers who find it even harder to get justice abroad than at home. "They are discouraged from buying in the firstplace if they

know their rights are not going to be protected. It puts them off," she said. "It's bad enough in your own country. Across borders it's even worse," she told a news conference. She said it took 29 months on average for a consumer's complaint to come to fruition across the EU, but it could take 72 months. "That's six years it can take," she noted. She said it cost an average of 2,437 Ecus ($3,119) for a consumer to process a complaint, a figure that could double in the event of failure. The form can be filled out in any of the EU's 11 official languages and then passed to the appropriate authorities. It will only come into play if an out of court settlement could not be reached, Bonino said. She said the forms would be tested in a small number of frontier regions for three years to see if they worked.