Member of the Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety of the European Parliament Dubravka Šuica participated today in the exchange of views with the European Commissioner for Consumer Policy Neven Mimica. ˝According to research and the bare facts, one in the same products do not contain the same properties in all European Union countries, yet they carry the same label. This is why I asked Commissioner Mimica to do something about it. What all of us MEPs should advocate is that the EU should not be divided into rich and poor, the European north and south, to countries that are in the Eurozone and those outside of it˝ she concluded Šuica.

Another Croatian member of the Committee on Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, Biljana Borzan, was also interested in the same topic.

According to research by the Association of Slovak Consumers, and transferred to the portal EurActiv, products of inferior quality are more often found on the shelves of stores in so-called new EU member states. According to the research conducted, it was noted that no lower quality products ended up on the German or Austrian market, but they did in eastern countries .

There is an initiative that companies offer quality assurance which should be equally respected in every country of distribution, but the legal framework is not yet in force in all EU member states.

˝The National Authority for Supervision and Consumer Protection is responsible for monitoring the possible irregularities in the market of individual member countries of the European Union. The European Commission will seek to further enhance and coordinate national bodies monitoring consumers so that in the future we will efficiently deal with this problem. If a certain product meets safety standards, and it is of poorer quality than products on another market, the product continues to comply with the given norms so in this direction is not possible to take any legal action˝ Mimica said in response to Dubravka Šuica’s question.