Ensuring that consumers are protected is at the heart of the Single Market, and ALDE have played a central role in building upon it during the last Parliament.

Roaming Charges consigned to the history books

ALDE played a key role in ending wholesale roaming charges in the European Union. Legislation adopted in 2015 provided for the abolition of retail roaming charges on voice calls, data and SMS as of 15 June 2017, a victory for mobility and consumer rights.

Safer food for EU consumers

ALDE has supported efforts to harmonise the EU’s legal framework for official hygiene controls. We also strongly supported new laws, which makes it safer and easier to put so called “novel foods” on the market. A streamlined European-level authorisation procedure will give food producers an improved legal framework to put their innovative products on the European market, while ensuring a high standard of food safety for consumers.

Limiting Geo-blocking

The free movement of goods and services is a fundamental pillar of the EU treaties that the ALDE Group is committed to defending. We have campaigned for and delivered regulation that will put an end to certain situations where location blocking and discrimination still occur. The new laws will cover every sale of goods, provision of services and certain digital services, which are not copyright-protected. It will not be possible to refuse sale for reasons related to nationality or place of residence/establishment. It will not be possible to discriminate based on the country of issue of credit card.

Deepening the EU’s Digital Single Market

One of the main obstacles for cross-border online purchases of digital content, e.g. music or movies, is legal uncertainty and high costs for businesses, hitting predominantly SMEs. ALDE played a prominent role in the fight to reduce these costs and to create legal certainty, namely as regards to rights in case of non-conformity and the right to damages. Cross-border business, via the internet, will thus be incentivised and will deepen the accomplishment of the Digital Single Market.

Rescue in the event of a car accident

ALDE supported the “eCall” proposal which will save lives: it introduces in all vehicles an eCall system which is activated in the event of a car accident. It automatically calls the EU-wide 112 emergency phone number and transmits data with the details of the vehicle and its location. ALDE would have not supported this text without strong safeguards on data privacy, but because of our work, the regulation provisions on data protection have been strengthened to preclude tracking of eCall-equipped vehicle before the accident occurs. ALDE also made sure that the new legislation guarantees that data gathered by emergency centres must not be transferred to third parties without explicit consent of the person concerned. Finally, clear information about the processing of eCall data will have to be included in the car owner’s manual and available online.