05 May 1999

EP adopted Commission Proposal on Distance Marketing of Consumer Financial Services (1st reading)

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The EP approved the report of Ria Oomen-Ruijten that was subject to a number of amendments. One amendment specifies that member states may not adopt provisions that seek to promote cross-border marketing of financial services other than those laid down in this directive and to protect consumers in cross-border purchases of financial services. The parliament is also calling for the supplier of the services to provide a summary of the main contractual terms and conditions in language easily understood by the consumer.
Except in the cases of financial services subject to price fluctuations over which the supplier has no influence or non-life insurance contracts valid for less than one month, the consumer has the right to withdraw from the contract without incurring any charge or penalty within 30 days (as opposed to 14 days in the commission's proposal). The parliament calls on the member states to take the appropriate measures to ensure that the consumer:

can request a cancellation of a payment in the case of fraudulent use of his debit/credit card in transactions falling within the directive,

is reimbursed in case of fraudulent use of the payment.
Member states are also called upon to lay down in their legislation that service providers shall provide efficient, free of charge, easy to access and well-publicised means to allow recipients to choose not to receive unsolicited commercial communications. The parliament would like to see the directive transposed into national legislation by 30/06/2001 rather than in 2002 as was proposed by the commission.

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