The legislative package aims to enhance consumer rights and strengthen the regulatory framework so unfair trade practices, can be tackled quickly and efficiently. In response to the issue of double standards raised by the Bulgarian Presidency and many other Member States, the European Commission has proposed the New Deal for Consumers package on 11 April 2018. The president of the Commission has often said: “There can be no second-class consumers in Europe.” Together with the European Commission, we are working to give all European citizens the quality of food that they deserve. The primary responsibility for ensuring food quality lies with each member state’s national consumer and food safety authorities. Double standards of this kind will not be tolerated. The Bulgarian EU Presidency places huge importance on protecting and enhancing the rights of all European citizens. This is a completely unacceptable double standard. It has become distressingly clear that some food companies believe that they can get away with offering sub-standard products in some markets: to be clear, in Central and Eastern European markets. They also deserve clarity about the amount of sugar in their drinks, and the amount of fish in their fish bites, and the amount of nuts in their spread. Consumers deserve the same level of quality irrespective of where they are in the EU, and they need to know what food they are giving to their children. This isn’t just about ingredients – it’s about quality. Recently we have found that even hazelnuts are not what they seem – certain chocolate firms sell chocolate with a significantly lower amount of nuts in one country than the other. Perhaps worst of all, baby food not only has different content but can be up to 35% more expensive in countries like Bulgaria. Frozen fish fingers, looking exactly the same, have much less fish in them in some countries than in others. There is a coffee firm, which sells the same brand of coffee in two different countries, in identical packaging, but one coffee has less caffeine and more sugar. I will not single out individual manufacturers by name, but the cases are by now rather well known. Pavlova is the Minister for the Bulgarian Presidency of the EU. Shockingly, many food manufacturers find it acceptable to sell their food with standard packaging throughout the EU, but with very different content, and often lower quality, in different countries, writes Lilyana Pavlova. What is in the food that we buy? It’s a question whose answer is less certain than it should be.
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