12 Amendments of Maria Gabriela ZOANĂ related to 2018/2008(INI)
Amendment 3 #
A. whereas consumers make an associative link between brand, product and quality and expect products of the same brand marketed under the same label to be identical in quality whether they are sold in their own country or in another Member State;
Amendment 17 #
Draft opinion
Recital B
Recital B
B. whereas analyses of product content and labelling have been carried out in approved laboratories in a number of EU countries, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, on certain products marketed in Central and Eastern European countries;
Amendment 34 #
Draft opinion
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
C a. whereas these analyses also show that certain products include less of the main ingredient, or ingredients that are considered to be less healthy and of poorer quality, or ingredients that have different taste, consistency and other sensory characteristics;
Amendment 35 #
Draft opinion
Recital C a (new)
Recital C a (new)
Ca. whereas current laboratory findings for dual quality products confirm that the lower quality products contain ingredients presenting a higher health risk to consumers;
Amendment 47 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1
Paragraph 1
1. Welcomes the allocation of EUR 2 million to develop a methodology for, and conduct, comparative testing of food products in different Member States; expects the testing to be completed at the earliest possible date, preferably in 2018, with a view to introducing specific measures as soon as possible to ban these unfair practices;
Amendment 51 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1 a. Calls on the Commission to continue the discussions with the stakeholders – consumer organisations, manufacturers and national authorities within the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network – and awaits development of the common methodology for the comparative tests of food products in different Member States, which should permit greater clarity on the scope of the problem;
Amendment 52 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 1 a (new)
Paragraph 1 a (new)
1a. Calls on the Commission, in view of the allocation of European funding for analyses, to make it compulsory for the findings thereof to be made public in all official EU languages, so that consumers can be properly informed about the quality of the products in question and make their choices accordingly;
Amendment 59 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 2
Paragraph 2
2. Firmly believes that, in response to European citizens’ concerns about different products being sold under the same brand in different Member States, the practice of ‘one brand, one product, different content and proportional composition’ needs to be stopped by means of an amendment to Directive 2005/29/EC of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices; strongly advocates that legislative changes be introduced to ensure that products of the same brand but of different quality or with different ingredients are marketed under different labels and that economic operators guilty of continued unfair practices be severely penalised and possibly banned from certain markets;
Amendment 74 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3
Paragraph 3
3. Considers that, until that practice is stopped, and in order to raise the profile of manufacturers’ initiatives on the use of local recipes, a system should be introduced for indicating, in a way that respects the consumer’s right of informed choice and consumer preferences, the local recipes used in the preparation of specific products; supports the active involvement of citizens in containing the spread of this practice by setting up a European alert system to identify dual quality products;
Amendment 82 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 a (new)
Paragraph 3 a (new)
3 a. Insists on the importance of the notion of a "product of reference", against which consumer expectations are to be measured; highlights that consumers need to be adequately informed if a product differs from their expectations, as when inadequate information leads them to buy a product they would not otherwise buy;
Amendment 87 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 3 b (new)
Paragraph 3 b (new)
3 b. Reminds the Commission Notice on the application of EU food and consumer protection law to issues of Dual Quality of food products (2017/C 327/01) which acknowledges producers' right to sell different products in different parts of the single market, due to local preferences, local and seasonal ingredients, or different places of manufacture; warns however that consumers must not be misled and calls on the national food authorities to establish, on a case-by-case basis, if this practice is illegal, based on the provisions of Directive 2005/29/EC on Unfair Commercial Practices, and their interplay with the fair information requirements in Regulation No 1169/2011 on Food Information;
Amendment 96 #
Draft opinion
Paragraph 4
Paragraph 4
4. Calls for the establishment of an agency or other specialised unit to monitor specialised authority or monitoring unit, keeping bureaucracy to a minimum, to verify consistency of composition and proportional use of ingredients in identically branded and packaged food products.