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About us » Annual reports » Summary 1999
Summary 1999The Consumer Protection Board (later Board) is a national authority which main task is to protect the legitimate rights of consumers and represent their interests, develop and implement provisions of the UN Guidelines, Consumer Protection Act and EU Consumer Policy. The main activities of the Board are as follows:
The Board constitutes an inexpensive alternative to the civil courts and the decisions of the Board serve as guidelines for trade enterprises. The Board is entitled to impose fines and prescriptive orders in case of the violation of the Board and other regulations. Together with other state and local government institutions the Board also monitors the following fields: product safety, misleading advertising, consumer contracts, public services, product-labelling etc. The main objective of the Board is to help and protect the consumers to make a conscious choice and to render help in infringements of the basic rights. The budget of the Consumer Protection Board was 6,1 million EEK and the Board has staff of 57 by the end of 1999. The total amount of controlled enterprises in 1999 was 3058. The total sum of the determined fines was 1,6 million EEK (approximately 100 000 euro). 2481 complaints were received from consumers. Half of them touched upon the trade problems and the another services (mostly water, heating, rent etc). The most frequent problems in trade were in connection with footwear and home appliances - lacking the usage guidelines or the guidelines are not correctly translated. The Board forwarded to the Administrative court 24 cases, from which 20 were in connection with infringements of selling procedures of alcohol and tobacco products. The obligatory prescriptions were challenged to the administrative court in 7 cases from which one was cancelled. In 2 cases the Board protected of consumers' rights in the civil court.
International Co-operation The Board has good relations with international consumer protection organisations, such as the Consumers International, the Consumer Research Centre at Louvain-la-Neuve University, the Association of Consumer Unions of Germany, and all Nordic Consumer agencies. The specialists of Board taken part in lot of international seminars and workshops, which were organised by different international organisations and where almost all the consumer protection matters, were covered. The Board is involved in Phare CICPP III programme. Under the programme were organised several activities - summer programme in Louvain-La -Neuve University; work shop on media relations and consumer policy lobbying, and seminar on consumer policy research techniques. The Board is according to Product Safety Act the national contact point concerning rapid exchange information on dangerous goods between other countries. The CPB has already participated actively in PHARE TRAPEX project. In 1999 improved the co-operation between following supervisory authorities:
Consumer Protection Policy The Board works out the consumer protection policy and co-operates actively with the Estonian Consumers' Union and the consumer protection units of local governments. The Board and the Estonian Consumers Union have a co-operation agreement since October 1999. The Consumer Protection Council continued its work as advisory body to the Board on consumer policy, which organises the regular meetings. It is the main body through which the local governments and voluntary organisations can participate in the decision making process for developing the consumer protection policy on government level. The main discussed topics were banking services in countrysides and how should be organised the expertise. The Advertising Council discussed following advertising law infringements as misleading and disparaging advertising, alcohol and gambling advertising as well as ignoring of good business standards.
Information and education A shortcut to advice is the free telephone consulting service, operating working daily. Experts of the Board provide advice and information about consumer rights, warranties, required labelling, and other safety and marking requirements. In 1999 was registered 7621 consultations in the free information telephone. The Board publishes information leaflets such as: "How to buy ", "How to act " in order to teach consumers to be critical and active and to give them practical tips to make their choices in everyday life. 3 of such information booklets - "How to by services", "How to by goods" and "Precious metals" - were published last year. In 1998 the Board started the publishing of self-information files, called TarKa. It consists from different collections, where are overviews about different groups of good(s) or service(s) from the consumers' point of views. One can find general descriptions, qualities, practical tips and legal advice's for buying a good or service. In 1999 was published 5 files - "Home appliances", "Cosmetics", "Dairy products and fats", "Fruits and vegetables" and "Applied chemistry". |