Intervention of Mrs. Emma Bonino, European Commissioner for Consumer Policy

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen,

First of all, I would like to congratulate the UN Department of Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development and the African Regional Bureau of Consumers International for organising this Conference.

The Conference comes at a particularly opportune moment. First of all, we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the UN Consumer Guidelines in order to see how they are applied in Africa and to establish a series of measures to extend them, not simply by general declarations of good intentions but through minimum legislation to protect the health and safety of African consumers.

I am well aware that certain African countries have already adopted consumer protection legislation and have influential consumer organisations, but these are exceptions. I should recall here that Zimbabwe, for example, already boasts a "Small Claims Court", a "Product Liability Act", a Consumer Council" and also a "Standardisation Office". Likewise, Tunisia has a very influential consumer organisation which publishes a magazine with a five-figure circulation.

One cannot generalise as to the situation in Africa. Rather, what is needed is a more finegrained analysis, in the light of the diversity of the points of departure, the existing political priorities, the form of civil society, etc. I think that the past few days of discussions have highlighted these points.

I am particularly glad to be here, because it gives me an opportunity to talk about a subject very close to my heart, since the European institutions, the Commission, Parliament and the Council have so far concentrated mainly on the consumer policy of the Member States and have not until very recently properly appreciated the very close links between consumer policy and development policy.

Let me begin by saying that consumer policy is not, as many people claim, a policy for the "haves". Nor is it a policy designed to squeeze maximum profits from the market by making comparisons and talking about value for money.

On the contrary, it is a policy which should help all citizens to consume more wisely, without any risk to health and safety, preventing wastage and ensuring that nature and natural resources are not destroyed by irresponsible behaviour.

It is also a policy which should protect disadvantaged populations against the eventuality of dangerous products or products whose shelf-life has expired flooding their markets from industrialised countries, or against misleading advertising which abuses the consumers' good faith.

Why has consumer policy, unlike other Community policies on, for example, the environment or health, never been included in development policy?

No doubt consumption was considered to be linked with the concept of the market and hence the "rich", whereas most of the inhabitants of developing countries can barely meet their basic needs.

As it was recalled here at the start of the conference, the consumer movement was born in the United States, emerging from a worker movement. This is a very important point. Indeed from the origin the movement focused on basic needs.

This is crucial because I am convinced that consumer policy in Africa should also put thespotlight first and foremost on how to satisfy these basic needs. This is an enormous debate which greatly transcends the traditional borders of what we call consumerism here at home. It should be remembered that to meet basic needs, what is required is some form of income, employment and products to buy. Clearly it is meaningless to speak of consumer choice if one has neither work, income nor goods to buy.

When referring to the UN Consumer Guidelines, which have served as a benchmark in a large number of countries throughout the world, one should naturally adapt them to African realities. Otherwise one risks being left with nothing but an empty shell, mouthing mere generalisations which will have no impact whatsoever on the ground. Obviously everyone can agree on the need for the right to information and education, or for product safety. But what most interests consumers in African countries is the right to drinkable water, medicaments, wholesome food, etc. These problems are often elementary but it is far harder to resolve them than it is to pen legislation.

For this reason the European Commission would like to concentrate its efforts and its resources on a new approach, linking development and consumption in a more pragmatic fashion, for example by combatting poverty through the promotion of different and better consumption.

This is not incompatible with our drive to encourage minimum consumer protection legislation. It is precisely in situations of absolute poverty, exclusion from consumption, need and poor nutrition that a consumer policy is vital to make best use of the few available resources, maximising local resources, recycling products where possible and guarding against the risks associated with some products bought on the market.

As a result, whether it is in the field of education and information of women, young people and all the key sectors, basic rules of nutritional hygiene, use of medicines, household waste management or methods for preserving food, it is an absolute priority to inform people by all the means available.

Of course, many aspects of this policy are already included in other policies, particularly environment, education and health, all of which focus on specific aspects of the life of consumers. Anything which is being done in the name of sustainable development also has the same goals and I would like to remind you that although the expression "sustainable development" is now common usage, it was used for the first time in the UN Consumer Guidelines whose 10th anniversary we are celebrating today in Harare.

For the authors of the Guidelines, sustainable development and consumption went hand in hand, which meant that complying with the Consumer Guidelines, especially in the most disadvantaged countries, was a conditio sine qua non for development policy.

Having established this link, the priorities have to be defined to provide a response to the most important question: what are we going to do tomorrow to adopt a more integrated and coordinated strategy, whilst seeking to identify new approaches and sources of funding?

Since being appointed as the Member of the Commission responsible for consumer policy, I have stressed our responsibility for finding answers to all these questions.

In its three-year action plan for the protection of consumers adopted in November1995, the Commission therefore specified that the dual concept of consumption and development would henceforth be one of its priorities. The European Parliament supported this initiative and, in turn, prepared a report to this end. In the meantime the Commission has also had some pilot experiments carried out in West Africa which have already been reported on at your Conference. The initial results are highly satisfactory and indicate not only the scale of the task but also the positive and practical effects of focused action. We have therefore concentrated on an information campaign in favour of "local consumption", on education andawareness-raising activities for street children, on recycling of urban waste, and piping drinking water into underprivileged areas, etc.

This Conference has been organised and funded by the European Union together with the United Nations precisely to enable a profile of the least advantaged consumers' needs and the priority activities for meeting them to be defined with all the players and people responsible for consumer organisations in Africa.

I would like to stress that we are not starting from scratch. Consumers International and several Member States have been active in this area for several years. I would like to mention the current or completed projects which the governments, government development agencies and consumer organisations in, for example, Sweden, Holland, Germany, Denmark, Austria and Belgium have been working on. The number and diversity of these projects confirm that they are responding to people's needs and cover widely differing aspects of consumption.

I would especially like to congratulate the representatives of the Member States' government organisations who fully understand, and sometimes have done for a long time, that consumer policy is an integral part of the development process. Their sphere of action extends not only to Africa but also to South America and South-East Asia.

I intend to draw up a multi-annual action plan based on these many initiatives and Consumers International's projects and our own pilot experiment. I repeat, making declarations is not enough; they must be followed by action. These joint activities should enable us to submit a request to the European Parliament for an independent budget to meet these needs in the 1997 European budget. That would enable the priorities set out in the action plan to be implemented in the field. I would like to stress that these initiatives should extend not only to Africa but also to other parts of the world where consumers are disadvantaged.

Commenting on what has been said in this conference, I subscribe fully to one of the objectives already mentioned several times in the context of Consumers International's activities, namely to "bring about healthy consumption in a healthy environment to maintain sustainable development". Consumption is also a market force and must be used to exert leverage for development by monitoring quality and safety for the benefit of everybody.

In order to create this "economic democracy", arrangements must be made for conducting a dialogue with producers, distributors, traders and importers, which, in turn, requires powerful, well-organised consumer organisations and dialogue with and support from the national authorities. We call upon the latter, in particular, to legislate in areas where the weakest consumers are most vulnerable.

However, I have to add two comments: legislation is not enough; the application of such legislation must be monitored and sanctions must be provided for when it is not applied. This may seem obvious, but it is particularly important to point it out in an assembly such as yours, which is preparing minimum legislation to be submitted to African governments.

Moreover, instead of working in isolation in each of the African countries, it would be preferable to address all the regional or non-regional structures - which are also represented here and which I would like to welcome - in order to prevent having to try to harmonise different legislations in neighbouring countries later.

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to finish by launching an appeal. I would like to see this Conference as being a starting point for concerted action in Africa with all governments, international organisations and consumers' organisations making a determined effort, at their own level, to break the vicious circle of poverty by adopting a proactive approach to consumption.

The mechanisms which generate poverty have to be broken down by coordinated action governing consumption at all levels from local production through sustainable consumptionto recycling and management of waste. This list is, of course, not exhaustive but illustrates the scale of the issue.

I very much hope that the governments of all African countries present here will be able to take cognisance of this point and to examine actively how it can be translated into reality in each country.

At the same time I would urge African consumer organisations to put pressure on their governments not only to provide them with theoretical rights but also to ensure that these rights are enforced.

This is because I firmly believe that consumer organisations have a pivotal role to play in civil society. Moreover, this role will become more prominent in the context of a society in which the "global market", liberalisation and structural adjustment are on the top of the agenda.

In other words, the organisations must simultaneously address the dimensions of consumption and poverty and reconcile them with the general trend towards a global and liberalised market.

When I say that we want to lend a hand, I would like to speak on behalf of the European Commission in agreement with all those responsible for development, but also our opposite numbers at the European Parliament.

I want to stress that the globalisation of the economy and the advent of the information society open new perspectives but that they also confront the most vulnerable countries with a growing range of products and services - and also more risks.

The Northern countries certainly have to take their responsibilities to heart and if measures in the field of foodstuffs and product quality control are not sufficiently effective in the importing countries, the North will have to do its bit to strengthen them. This is a difficult but extremely important dimension of the problem.

I would like to conclude congratulating all the participants at this Conference for their efforts over the past week. I hope that the resolutions and model legislation you have come up with will be a real catalyst in giving all the citizens of Africa and the world the basic right to respect as citizens and consumers. I thus ask all the governments to do what is necessary to implement these proposals in everybody's interest.

The European Commission, in its turn, will take coordinated measures on as large a scale as possible through the European Development Fund and also on its own if Parliament gives us the means to do so.