Division Current situation

On consumer affairs, Eurostat is producing on an annual basis a panorama publication ‘Consumers in Europe: facts and figures’ and has established an inter-services task force on detailed price statistics.

Food safety is an important topic within the context of consumer protection policy and the EU has developed a wide range of legislative and other actions intended to guarantee effective control systems over the full chain, including legally established standards for the environment and animal welfare.

The purpose of Eurostat’s effort on food safety statistics is to provide methodological advice and statistical data of interest not only to policy makers but also to private stakeholders and the public in general.

Main initiatives for 2008 to 2012 (consumer affairs):

• ‘hard’ official statistics (e.g. detailed prices, cross border consumption expenditure, business to consumer, etc.) and a methodological assistance for soft statistics developed by other public/private bodies will be developed,

• an action plan following the conclusions of the inter-services task force on detailed price statistics will be prepared,

• a detailed study about a possible module on consumer protection issues to be included in the new instrument (E4SM) currently being developed by Eurostat will be launched.

Main initiatives for 2008 to 2012 (food safety):

• the development of the relevant statistics for monitoring food safety will be pursued,

• the availability and quality of statistics on labelled products (organic products, products based on genetically modified organisms, etc.) will be improved.