Consumer authorities in Europe: policing markets or empowering consumers?

Abstract

Consumer protection authorities are vital for domestic markets and the smooth functioning of the EU common market. Established several decades ago, these authorities have different institutional designs in different European countries. This paper aims to identify them and assess their main variations. Based on the literature at the intersection of consumer protection regimes and regulatory governance, we propose a theoretical distinction between enforcement-focused authorities and service delivery-oriented authorities. Specifically, we suggest these principles lead to either a supervisory model, which disciplines market actors, or an empowering model, which gives citizens the keys to prevent market abuses. To empirically test whether these two models capture the variety of institutional designs and practices consumer authorities may adopt, we have identified four different dimensions that characterize their connections to politics, business, and citizens: political autonomy, social accountability, administrative enforcement, and consumer awareness. We begin by discussing which dimensions are associated with which model and then examine the presence of the two models across Europe. Our analysis is based on Bayesian factorial analysis and a Ward.D cluster construction grounded in an original dataset of institutional characteristics from general consumer authorities in 27 EU countries, the UK, and Norway, offering empirical evidence to support our argument. The results suggest that EU efforts to build institutional harmonization have had limited success. Likewise, traditional administrative models across Europe may no longer hold the same relevance as previously indicated in research. Our findings show instead that consumer authorities in Europe can generally be distinguished from each other based on these two principles, though many operate with a hybrid approach.