ConPolicy Newsletter 2018 - 1

Dear reader of the ConPolicy newsletter,

We hope you have spent a nice Christmas time and we wish you a happy and prosperous New Year 2018!

As you will see, our newsletter is released in a new appearance. We took up your comments from last year during the redesign and hope that this new edition will make the newsletter even more attractive to you. While much has changed in the field of optics, the content structure and the focus on a well-founded overview of consumer-policy topics and events remains unchanged. - Because that's what you wanted. Thank you very much for your helpful feedback!

Moreover, this newsletter also contains a summary of your consumer policy wishes.

We wish you an exciting read!

Kind regards!

Your ConPolicy team

In today's issue ConPolicy informs you about:

  News about ConPolicy

Consumer Policy Wish List for 2018 – Your Wishes
ConPoliy wishes a happy New Year 2018!

Many of you have reacted to our invitation and sent us a consumer policy wish list for 2018. We have collected and analyzed your wishes and put them in a wordcloud.

The results show that in addition to the general wish to empower consumers, one pressing specific enforcement wish is to improve collective action (class action). Furthermore, there is a wide range of other issues, ranging from affordable housing, to improvements for privacy and sustainable consumption and fair textiles. This overviews once more confirms that consumer policy represents a horizontal policy field with links to many national and global pressing issues starting with social inclusion to justice and climate protection.

At this point, we would like to thank you for the extensive participation and the high response rate. Furthermore, we deeply hope you got off to a good start in 2018 and that we can together turn the upcoming year into a success for consumer policy.

Yours sincerely, Your ConPolicy-Team!

Consulting the Consumer Advice Center North Rhine-Westphalia
ConPolicy presents evaluation results on neighborhood-based consumer advice

As part of the pilot project "Consumer Advice in the Neighborhood", since 2016, the Consumer Advice Center of North Rhine-Westphalia has been offering consultation hours and education on consumer topics in three districts in Cologne in order to better reach the citizens living there.

For two years, ConPolicy has advised and evaluated the Consumer Center in its work in the neighborhoods. In December, managing director Prof. Dr. Christian Thorun and project manager Dr. Max Vetter presented the final evaluation report to representatives of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, the city of Cologne, the social welfare organizations and the Consumer Advice Center in Cologne. In this report, ConPolicy draws a positive conclusion about the networking and consulting activities of the Consumer Advice Center in this innovative approach. The report also identifies general success factors for consumer work in neighborhoods such as low thresholds of offers, intensive networking with multipliers and a clear definition of target groups.

Since autumn 2017, the approach has been extended to the whole of Germany with the start of the project "Strengthening Consumers in the Neighborhood". This project is embedded in the inter-ministerial strategy "Social City" under the direction of the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation, Building and Nuclear Safety (BMUB).

The ConPolicy report can be found here.

  Consumer policy news

Financial services
FCA facilitate the comparison of bank accounts for consumers

Today, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) published a final set of rules that fosters the transparency regarding the services of providers of… Read more

Consumer behavior
Consumption-related CO2 emissions remain unchanged despite higher market shares of green products

Today, the German Federal Environmental Agency (UBA) published the results of its study "Green Products in Germany 2017: Market observations for… Read more

Insurance services
Digital technologies are changing the insurance sector

Today, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA) published its sixth Consumer Trends Report on the major developments in the… Read more

  Recommended reading

Sanders, M. et al.
Using data science in policy

The range of techniques that make up data science – new tools for analyzing data, new datasets, and novel forms of data – have great potential to be… Read more

EC
Report on the functioning of the European Online Dispute Resolution platform

Facilitating cross-border e-commerce, in particular for SMEs, and strengthening consumers' trust when shopping online is an important part of the… Read more

FCA
Distributed Ledger Technology – Feedback statement on Discussion Paper 17/03

In April 2017 The FCA announced that it was seeking stakeholder views on the potential for future development of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT)… Read more

EIOPA
Sixth Consumer Trends Report

Digital technologies continue to progressively penetrate the European insurance sector; leveraging their cutting-edge data analysis tools and… Read more

ITU
Measuring the Information Society Report 2017 – Volume I

The release of this report comes after the successful conclusion of the World Telecommunication Development Conference (WTDC), held in Buenos Aires,… Read more

CI
Testing our trust: consumers and the Internet of Things – 2017 review

In April 2016, Consumers International published Connection and Protection in the Digital Age: The Internet of Things and challenges for consumer… Read more

OECD
Science, Technology and Industry Scoreboard 2017 – The digital transformation

Mobility, cloud computing, the Internet of Things (IoT), artificial intelligence (AI) and big data analytics are among the most important technologies… Read more

Hagemann, H.
Sustainability ranking online shops 2017 – How well consumers are informed about products

Product-related consumer information supports consumers' information and orientation, also with regard to the sustainability of goods, and helps them… Read more

Daskalakis, M. & F. Beckenbach
Shaping environmental policy in a citizen-friendly manner

Which factors are relevant for environmental decisions? How can people be motivated to act in an environmentally responsible manner and how can… Read more