Annual
report 2024

• The Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition Directive, adopted in February, will better protect consumers against greenwashing, inform them about how durable and repairable products are, and ban certain unfair business practices leading to short product lifespans.
• In April, the EU adopted the Right to Repair, which will help consumers repair their goods more easily and use their products longer. BEUC was instrumental in making sure that while encouraging repair, when a product breaks, consumers will be able to choose between repair or replacement. Another longtime ask taken on board was that when consumers choose to repair, they will be protected with an extra one-year guarantee.
• Adopted at the same time, new Ecodesign rules will ensure that products are designed in the first place to be durable. Consumers can expect products that last longer and have a reduced environmental impact.

In line with BEUC’s longstanding demand, the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of Agriculture in the EU recommended making the healthy and sustainable choice the easy one for consumers. Stakeholders from across the food chain, including BEUC, agreed that policies must not only target consumers via labelling, but also players such as food companies and retailers, whose commercial practices heavily shape consumer food choices.

The EU is working to improve consumer conditions in digital services by identifying gaps and specific needs for legislative action. When the European Commission published its Digital Fairness Fitness Check in November, BEUC’s work was largely taken into account. The Commission acknowledged that EU consumer law does not provide sufficient protection and legal certainty around practices such as dark patterns, influencer marketing or addictive design.

The European Health Data Space agreed in March by the EU institutions is a step forward to improve healthcare. For example, it allows a medical practitioner to access the health data of a patient from another EU country who is wheeled into the emergency room unconscious. However, we commented that the institutions should have given more choice to people to decide for themselves who their data is shared with, and for what purpose.

Both the European Parliament and Council took into consideration BEUC’s recommendations to improve the safety of children when playing with toys in their respective positions adopted in the Spring. This was followed by negotiations between them on the draft Toy Safety Regulation that continued into 2025.

BEUC’s work to abolish the charges telecoms operators impose on consumers when they communicate with someone based in another EU/EEA country was heard. The Gigabit Infrastructure Act foresees an end to intra-EU communications charges by 2029, which should close an important connectivity gap in the EU telecoms market.

BEUC’s recommendations to preserve competition and consumer protection in telecoms markets were included in Member States’ political conclusions on the European Commission’s White Paper on digital infrastructure. We argued that the provision of internet connectivity must be guided by clear, predictable rules which encourage the deployment of digital infrastructure where consumers need it most.

Thanks to the EU’s Instant Payments Regulation agreed in 2024, consumers can benefit from faster and safer payments (and at no greater cost than a normal bank transfer). The Regulation opens up new payment solutions between retail customers and merchants both in stores (e.g. via a QR code) and online. BEUC was active throughout the legislative process to ensure that consumers’ concerns were heard.

In September, the EU Court of Justice confirmed definitively that Google had illegally abused its dominance in the search engine market to deny rival comparison shopping services the possibility to compete fairly. BEUC was a complainant against Google during the Commission’s investigation and supported the Commission before the Court. Because Google can no longer make rival comparison shopping services virtually invisible, consumers will have a wider choice of comparison services and get potentially cheaper prices and useful product information.

BEUC’s demands to better protect consumers online were included in the international agreement on e-commerce concluded in July by more than 90 member countries of the World Trade Organization. The deal foresees, for example, that goods sold online should be safe and that consumers have access to redress if something goes wrong after an online purchase. It also safeguards consumers’ data protection and privacy rights.

In January 2024, BEUC became a member of the Critical Medicines Alliance newly set up by the European Commission. BEUC’s contribution focuses on how to strengthen medicines supply security and prevent shortages.

BEUC highlighted, together with its members, the main EU successes of recent years and provided recommendations as to the priorities for the new mandate, both to the European Commission and the European Parliament under the theme “Europe, consumers count on you”. Following the appointment of the European Commission, BEUC wrote to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to provide input to the 2024-2029 Commission and to all relevant Commissioners highlighting consumers’ concerns and expectations.

In February 2024, we brought to EU lawmakers’ attention a survey that our members carried out in 8 countries, showing the need to act for better animal welfare. Our data revealed that almost 9 in 10 consumers support new laws to improve the welfare of farmed animals, such as providing more living space, and banning cage systems and mutilations.

In April, the EU Parliament proposed some positive changes to the pharma package, the EU’s largest reform of pharmaceutical legislation in twenty years, but we commented that these are unlikely to go far enough to significantly improve people’s access to medicines. It was encouraging that the Parliament supports requirements for pharma companies to better prevent shortages. We lamented that the Parliament failed to shorten the period during which a new medicine is protected from competition.

The European Parliament voted in April 2024 and the Council adopted its position in June 2024 to substantially strengthen the rules relating to cross-border GDPR enforcement procedures, whose inefficiency have plagued the landmark data protection law. Consumer groups have repeatedly flagged the slowness and complex procedures for cross-border enforcement of the GDPR as a major barrier to effective protection of consumers’ personal data.

As negotiations on the reform of passenger rights were moving ahead in November, we warned that the proposals were falling short of adequately protecting consumers. We called on Member States to make decisive changes to ensure consumers can confidently exercise their rights in practice. We need harmonised enforcement, tough sanctions for non-compliance and improved cooperation between authorities to prevent abuses effectively.

In February, the EU Commission proposed a 90% cut in the EU’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2040, compared to 1990 levels in a bid to become carbon neutral by 2050. We argued that to reach this target, decision makers should make the roll out of ambitious climate legislation their number one priority. We also called on the Commission to address food, an untapped sector, as part of its climate targets and swiftly publish long-awaited measures to make our food systems sustainable.

When Enrico Letta published his report on the Single Market in April, we hailed it as a welcome effort to remove barriers that prevent the Single Market from delivering its potential. Throughout its existence, the Single Market has translated into benefits for consumers in the form of greater choice in products and services across EU countries. We called for action in areas where the Single Market can deliver more for consumers, such as investment and pensions, rail and the energy transition but warned against pushing for more concentration in certain markets, such as the telecoms sector.

In September, former Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi published a long-awaited report laying out how to boost EU industry’s competitiveness on the global stage. In our view, the report contained positive signals on energy, and trade, but risks hurting European consumers’ pockets if suggestions concerning digital rights and competition in critical sectors such as telecoms were implemented.

In June 2024 - before tariffs were hitting headlines every single day - the European Commission imposed duties of up to 38% on imports of Chinese electric vehicles into the EU. We commented that this move is part of a legitimate bid to rebalance competition in the EU electric car market. It must be complemented by action at EU and national level to ensure consumers have access to affordable and innovative electric cars.

Before the EU-Mercosur trade deal was signed off in December, we teamed up with farmers’ representatives to highlight that the deal must support the Green Deal by making sustainable and healthy choices easy and fair for both consumers and farmers. We argued that trade agreements should focus primarily on trading sustainable products that support the green transition, rather than those that hinder it.

In the field of competition, following the entering into force of the Digital Markets Act (DMA) BEUC actively contributed to the implementation of the new law to ensure that consumers benefit from the new rights and possibilities to have more choice in digital markets. This contribution supported the Commission in pushing gatekeepers’ compliance. Examples include:

• Ahead of the 7 March 2024 deadline for Big Tech companies to comply with their new obligations, BEUC called on the European Commission to take prompt and effective enforcement action if gatekeepers fail to do so.
• A few weeks later, we welcomed the Commission launching investigative proceedings against Meta, Google and Apple for failing to comply with the DMA, in a move that will encourage consumers that they will get greater choice in online markets.
• In July, we hailed the Commission’s enforcement action against Meta’s pay-or-consent model as good news for consumers. It came on top of the complaints against Meta’s model for breaches of consumer law and data protection law which our members raised a few months earlier (see below)
• In November, we showed that Meta, Apple and Alphabet (Google), based on updates the three gatekeepers had recently made to their compliance plans, are probably not fully complying with the Digital Markets Act. In our report, we summarised some ongoing issues which the Commission should take onboard to assess the compliance of these gatekeepers with their DMA obligations.

• BEUC launched a coordinated complaint against Temu under the Digital Services Act, the first of its kind since the Regulation entered into force. The action seeks to ensure that the online marketplace respect European legislation designed to protect consumers against unsafe products and manipulative practices.
• In February a coordinated action against Meta was also initiated by BEUC and 8 of its members under the Digital Markets Act, consumer law and data protection law challenging Meta’s pay or consent approach, which we deemed illegal.
• BEUC launched an alert to the CPC-Network in September 2024 for unfair commercial practices conducted in the video game sector.

We continued contributing to the CPC alert on misleading environmental claims in the air transport sector. In April we reacted to the CPC network’s announcement they would launch an investigation into the sector. In September we organised an event with experts from different backgrounds to look into solutions to this greenwashing problem.

As part of their ongoing cooperation, the European Commission, members of the Consumer Protection Cooperation (CPC) Network and BEUC held a joint workshop in October in Brussels to discuss new market trends and persisting issues.

BEUC organised exchanges with our member organisations on several key topics for collective redress (including financing collective litigation, application of private international law and others). We also took stock of the development of collective redress after two years in Europe, highlighting what needs to be done. We also organised several events to raise awareness and to share experience among stakeholders on collective redress.

BEUC intervened in several cases before the Court of Justice of the European Union. In February 2024, BEUC submitted formal comments before the EU’s General Court in a case where Amazon contests its designation as a Very Large Online Platform (VLOP) and challenges some provisions under the Digital Services Act.

BEUC continued contributing to the competition cases before the Court of Justice of the EU, namely the Google Shopping and Android cases. One important achievement of 2024 was the judgement of the CJEU in the Google Shopping case, which confirmed the position of the European Commission, BEUC and other interveners that Google cannot unfairly deny European consumers access to full and unbiased online information about where to get the best deals.

In March, the Commission ordered Apple to remove restrictions on music streaming app developers that prevented them from informing iPhone and iPad users about alternative and cheaper music subscription services available outside of their apps. The Commission fined Apple over €1.8 billion for having imposed illegal restrictions for over ten years. BEUC formally participated in, and contributed to, the European Commission’s antitrust investigation.

To contribute to better enforcement at national level, BEUC supported its national members in scaling up enforcement in France, Czech Republic, North Macedonia and Hungary.

In 2024, we continued our collaboration dating from 2022 with two other civil society groups: Eurogroup for Animals and the European Public Health Alliance (EPHA) as part of our project ‘Put Change on the Menu’. Two out of the three organisations, including BEUC, were part of the Strategic Dialogue on the Future of Agriculture, a high-level group tasked to develop shared recommendations for the future of EU food and farming. As a result of our collaboration with our project partners, we successfully included our main shared demands around food environments and healthy and sustainable diets in the final report of this group after seven months of debates. We developed a leaflet and video with a special recipe for sustainable food systems that lists our shared demands for the 2024-29 Commission mandate.

Together with our sister organisation ANEC, we carried out a project from 2022-2024 to improve civil society participation in the standardisation process for AI technologies. Inspired by the negotiation of the AI Act, the project focused on ensuring that standardisation bodies did not focus on areas that should be addressed by lawmakers (e.g. fundamental rights).

Beyond AI, the project included a broader analysis of the European standardisation system and we made concrete proposals to improve the process of standardisation. In June, we also held a webinar to engage a broader audience in standardisation, especially AI standardisation.

This activity is part of a multi-year project looking at the challenges posed by the digitisation of markets, which is a direct continuation of a previous project where we concluded that consumer law is currently not fit for purpose to address these challenges and developed recommendations on how to change it. During the second project we further developed our policy recommendations on digital fairness for consumers, including in specific areas such as influencer marketing and personalised pricing. In October 2024, the European Commission published the results of the so-called Digital Fairness Fitness Check of EU consumer law, which contained more than 30 references to our work. This project is supported by the Adessium Foundation.

Eight training courses/workshops were organised for BEUC members on: sustainability and trade (one on policy and another one on communications), the green transition and food prices, consumer products and harmful chemicals, payment fraud liability, the results of the EU elections, out-of-court settlements and dynamics for effective advocacy. These allowed our members to deliver better informed advice to consumers about their rights and opportunities.

In 2024, we continued the CLEAR-HP project, a sister project of CLEAR-X. The “CLEAR” project series, now in its fourth iteration, stands for “Consumers Leading the EU’s Energy Ambition Response”. “HP” refers to the renewable heating device that is at the heart of this project: the heat pump. In 2024, heat pumps were selected by project partners and tested in conditions that simulate consumers’ experience to propose the best products at national level. Additionally, we shared regular news on heat pumps and the project throughout the year, including the launch of the first two collective purchase actions in Spain and Portugal.

By offering rigorously tested heat pump options and organising collective purchase campaigns, this project enables consumers to select energy-efficient products. They also benefit from proper home assessments, information about financing options, and have their heat pumps installed by certified professionals, ensuring a seamless experience. By the end of the project in 2026 we aim to see more than 40,000 consumers benefiting from efficient and reliable heat pumps.

The project involves consumer organisations from Belgium (Testachats/Testaankoop), Bulgaria (Българска национална асоциация “Активни потребители”), Italy (Altroconsumo), Portugal (DECO PROTeste), Slovakia (Spoločnosť ochrany spotrebiteľov (S.O.S.), Slovenia (Zveza potrošnikov Slovenije (ZPS), and Spain (Organización de consumidores y usuarios – OCU), coordinated by BEUC Secretariat. We have partnered with the International Consumer Research & Testing (ICRT).

In 2024, BEUC continued supporting consumer organisations and digital rights groups in strengthening their expertise and activities in the field of private enforcement of consumer rights. As part of its capacity-building efforts, BEUC organised online training sessions on private international law in cross-border actions and on the AI Act as a basis for representative actions, and facilitated information exchange through collective redress newsletters in August and November. These activities are part of a two-year collective redress project (2024–2025), building on the results of the previous project (2022–2023). Both projects received funding from Luminate.

We issued 52 press reactions and were contacted by journalists 298 times, which led to over 8,500 quotes in the written press, including in top-tier media.

In addition, we gave 56 interviews to media outlets.

We posted over 1,300 times on our three social media platforms combined. We observed a significant growth in impressions and followership on LinkedIn.

BEUC staff spoke at a total of 231 public events across all our topics.

We had various meetings with the European Commission: 1 with a Commissioner, 8 with Directors-General or Deputy Directors-General, and 169 with staff from a variety of departments that work on consumer-related topics.

We organised public events on topics such as rail travel, access to medicines, greenwashing and dynamic energy prices.

On our blog – the Consumer Corner – staff from the BEUC Secretariat in Brussels or national consumer organisations gave their views in 18 posts. These included topics such as merger control, online reviews, payment fraud, pharmaceuticals or alcohol labelling.

It is our policy to seek funding only in priority areas identified by our members as important for consumers. This funding can be either unrestricted (to support our core work) or tied to a specific project or programme. All potential funders are carefully vetted through our due diligence process to ensure that they align with our goals and do not threaten our integrity or independence.

Our work in 2024 was supported by the following grants and contracts:

EU operating grant

This grant is received from the consumer strand of the Single Market Programme (Consumers), 2021-27.

EU funded projects

• CLEAR-X (Consumers Leading the EU’s Energy Ambition Response), 2021-2024
• CLEAR-HP (Consumers Leading the EU’s Energy Ambition Response through uptake of Heat Pumps), 2023-2026
• Ecodesigned4LIFE (Ecodesigned 4 low Impact and For Efficiency), 2023-2026
• Consumer Law Ready (CLR), 2023-2025
• Participation in the EU Ecolabel Scheme (with European Environmental Bureau).

Foundations that support our work (A-Z)

• Adessium Foundation
• Broad Reach Foundation via Tides Foundation
• Climate Finance Fund (CFF)
• ClimateWorks Foundation
• European Climate Foundation (ECF)
• European Environment & Health Initiative (EEHI) via Swiss Philanthropy Foundation
• Ford Foundation
• Healthy Food, Healthy Planet via a collaboration with the Eurogroup for Animals
• Karuna Foundation via Craigslist Fund
• KR Foundation
• Luminate
• Mercator Foundation
• Omidyar Network
• Open Philanthropy
• Open Society Foundations