Today the Austrian EU Presidency is organising the 8th European Consumer Day, in cooperation with the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). The date marks US President John F. Kennedy’s declaration to the US Congress on 15 March 1962, when he spoke in support of consumers and spelled out four fundamental consumer rights (the right to safety; the right to be informed; the right to choose; the right to be heard).

In 1985 the United Nations decided that each year 15 March would be a special consumer rights’ day across the world. In 1999 the European Consumer Day (ECD) was launched at the EESC’s initiative, with the aim of making the public more aware of EU consumer policy and informing people of the ongoing work in this area.

In his 1962 speech Kennedy defined the four fundamental rights of consumers.

1. The right to safety: the right to be protected against products, production processes and services that are hazardous to health or life.

2. The right to be informed: the right to be given the facts and information you need to make your own choices.

3. The right to choose: the right to be able to choose from a range of products and services offered at competitive prices. As a consumer, you have the right to expect satisfactory quality.

4. The right to be heard: the right to have your interests as a consumer represented in government policy.

All of those rights are sensible, and luckily a free and functioning market process can ensure them all.

Unfortunately, however, governments have interfered, restricting consumers’ rights:

1. The right to safety

There are many everyday products that consumers can buy that are potentially dangerous. However, life as we know it could probably not continue if we did not allow them to be available to consumers. An obvious example is cars. Thousands of people die every year in car accidents. Hence, cars are hazardous to life. But we live with them just the same because the benefit of having cars outweighs the cost.

Human productivity would be drastically reduced if we did not have cars. We would produce less, the risk of economic catastrophes and hunger would increase dramatically. The death toll for humans in a world with no cars would rapidly increase.

This means that we have to take into consideration the costs and benefits of allowing products that can harm us as consumers. Consumers should be allowed a greater say in what products they want to use, even if these products can be dangerous if not used properly. However, if governments prohibit consumers from making informed choices about risks and benefits then we are less well off because we have less practice in making informed choices. Allowing governments to disenfranchise us as consumers will prevent us from acting as responsible and sensible individuals.  It will lead to a society where bureaucrats choose instead of consumers.

Consumer safety does not mean that the consumer is being removed from a product that can be harmful, but that, as a responsible adult, he can hold producers liable for the harm their product has caused.

2. The right to be informed

When it comes to the right to be informed the European consumers are severely underprivileged. There is an abundance of rules and regulations that prevent consumers from making informed choices, because producers are prevented from communication with consumers. In many cases it is forbidden for producers to inform consumers about the benefits of their own products compared to others.

Obvious examples are pharmaceutical and tobacco products, where consumers are prevented from receiving information from producers. But when consumers are not given the facts, when consumers are not given information, then they cannot make informed choices. This is the case in the health care sector. Some estimates indicate that 50% of Danish diabetics have not yet been diagnosed. This means that for every patient there is still one who does not know that he or she has diabetes.

The Danish government has no direct interest in informing these unfortunate patients because that would increase the pressure on government budgets. On the other hand, however, companies like Novo Nordisk, Pfizer and Sanofi-Aventis have a direct interest in having people go to the doctor and find out whether they have diabetes. The pharmaceuticals produced by these companies will all work differently – so patients are more than likely to have different preferences for what insulin medication they will use. Price and method of delivery is important – but in the absence of information, the healthcare consumer cannot make an informed choice.

Healthcare and tobacco are not the only areas in which the EU and national governments prohibit producers from informing consumers. Moreover, some governments add additional taxes to marketing materials in order to reduce them. Fewer marketing fliers have one result: less well informed consumers.

3. The right to choose

In many regards, the European politicians have decided to choose for us. There are a number of products that Europeans cannot buy, because it is deemed that the uninformed consumers are unable to make the right choice.

An obvious example is smokeless tobacco, which is less harmful than cigarettes, but still banned in much of the European Union. Not only tobacco products are banned. Other products are regulated: Danish Feta cheese is not allowed to be called Feta cheese, vitamins and minerals are regulated and prohibited from being marketed.

4. The right to be heard

This right is part of being represented, and being heard is a question of government accountability. Often government studies concern data that cannot be re-examined. Too often government, or heavily government financed NGOs active in the policy debate call for further government intervention in the consumers’ ability to choose.

In order to guarantee European consumers their fundamental rights it is necessary that they once again become free to make their own choices – and not have Brussels bureaucrats make the choices for them.