Consumer authorities in Europe: policing markets or empowering consumers?

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• dc.contributor.author Jordana, Jacint
• dc.contributor.author Rozas-Bugueño, Joaquin
• dc.contributor.author Triviño Salazar, Juan Carlos
• dc.date.accessioned 2025-07-16T07:24:02Z
• dc.date.available 2025-07-16T07:24:02Z
• dc.date.issued 2025
• dc.description.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.en
• dc.description.sponsorship This study was supported by the NORFACE Joint Research Programme on Democratic Governance in a Turbulent Age (Reconnect project), funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement 822166) and the Spanish Agencia Estatal de Investigación from the Ministerio de Ciencia (grant agreement PIC2020-112243).en
• dc.format.mimetype application/pdf
• dc.identifier.citation Jordana J, Rozas‐Bugueño J, Triviño‐Salazar JC. Consumer authorities in Europe: policing markets or empowering consumers? Governance. 2025 Jul;38(3):1-16. DOI: 10.1111/gove.70033
• dc.identifier.doi http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/gove.70033
• dc.identifier.issn 0952-1895
• dc.identifier.uri http://hdl.handle.net/10230/70918
• dc.language.iso eng
• dc.publisher Wiley
• dc.relation.ispartof Governance. 2025 Jul;38(3):1-16
• dc.relation.projectID info:eu-repo/grantAgreement/EC/H2020/822166
• dc.rights © 2025 The Author(s). Governance published by Wiley Periodicals LLC. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes.
• dc.rights.accessRights info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess
• dc.rights.uri http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
• dc.subject.keyword Consumer protection authoritiesen
• dc.subject.keyword Consumer protection regimesen
• dc.subject.keyword Europeen
• dc.title Consumer authorities in Europe: policing markets or empowering consumers?en
• dc.type info:eu-repo/semantics/article
• dc.type.version info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion