European Union – Consumer protection is one of the most important challenges for Europe and could be one of the priority areas during the Hungarian EU presidency, the justice minister said on Thursday at a book launch event of the Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH) in Budapest.

A subject that directly concerns the safety of families

Bence Tuzson stressed that the enforcement of consumer rights also concerns the security of families, and that the government has always considered it important. In Hungary, this is an area that involves many public bodies, including the National Food Chain Safety Office (Nébih) and the Hungarian National Bank (MNB).

Recent years have brought many new tasks, with legislation having to be revised and thousands of inflation-related checks alone. Perhaps the biggest difficulty today is the online world, cross-border purchases and internet marketplaces, which make it harder for sellers to enforce consumer protection rules, he added.

EU reform needed

The minister said the EU should create common background legislation and rules in this area, because it is a matter of competitiveness for the EU in global competition. GDPR rules are very important to protect personal rights, but the economic impact must also be taken into account.

These obligations are not respected by the US, so today US companies know more about European consumers than the member states themselves, which do not have access to such data,” he explained.

Developing the online economy

András Tóth, Deputy Chairman of the GVH called the development of the online economy a particularly important area from a consumer protection perspective, as there will always be new consumers and new data will be generated from every purchase.

However, he said the EU’s „legislative juggernaut” was a sign that Brussels wanted to solve the challenges of digital transformation „in legal terms”, leaving a huge legislative burden on member states.

Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of European data is handled by servers to which the US intelligence services have access, and China considers its own data to be of strategic value and will never give any of it to other countries, András Tóth said.