November 20, 2007
An Expensive Train of Thought
It was good to see the European Commission getting tough last week with websites that put out misleading information about airline ticket prices and sales conditions. An attempt to stick up for consumers has been one of the most distinctive features of José Manuel Barroso’s Commission presidency over the past 18 months, and here they went one step farther.
You could say Barroso and his colleagues hit on the idea of expanding consumer rights as a way of distracting attention from the disaster of the French and Dutch constitutional treaty referendums of 2005. Or perhaps the Commission crusaders had always secretly yearned to put some populist sauce on the elitist fish that had generally been served on the EU policy menu since the 1950s.
Either way, the crackdown on air ticket websites broke fresh ground because, I am told, it was the first time that national enforcement authorities had carried out such simultaneous action in the field of consumer rights. Authorities in Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Greece, Italy, Lithuania, Malta, Portugal, Spain and Sweden - as well as non-EU member Norway - checked out more than 400 websites, with the Commission co-ordinating the move from Brussels.
The pro-consumer drive extends to other fields. High mobile phone roaming charges have come down as a result of a regulation that came into force across the EU on 30 June. A consumer credit directive covering the fragmented €800bn consumer lending market mandates uniform transparency rules in the EU, and sets uniform standards for calculating annual percentage rates of charges.
But let’s get back to the transport sector. Has anyone this week thought of using Eurostar’s internet site to buy tickets for travel between London and Brussels in December? If so, they should fortify themselves with a strong drink or a tranquilliser first. Yesterday the price of a return trip for two youths aged 14 and 13, leaving London on December 7 and returning on December 9, was £598 (about €837).
Hmmm. Could this be one for the Commission’s newly crowned consumer rights champions, perhaps?
Ah, well, maybe not. Unlike the airline ticket websites, Eurostar’s quoted prices are not misleading in the slightest.
