Improve consumer protection worldwide

Context

Consumer protection is crucial to maintaining the balance between businesses and consumers. It also contributes to meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and therefore to economic, socially just and environmentally friendly development.

Rapid growth of emerging economies and global developments such as digitalisation and globalisation have greatly changed business in developing countries and emerging economies. Therefore, new regulations and instruments to enforce these rules are needed to protect consumers.

At the same time, new technologies and innovative market participants offer opportunities to develop new approaches. These enable the relationship between consumers and companies to be balanced and environmentally friendly consumption can be better implemented globally.

Objective

Participating institutions from Brazil, China, Indonesia and Germany can more effectively mainstream and enforce consumer rights. This contributes to achieving the SDGs, especially with regard to digitalisation, sustainability and social consumer protection.

Approach

The project focuses on international dialogue to promote consumer protection worldwide. In doing so, it builds on a previous project between Brazil, China, Indonesia and Germany. Furthermore, it involves African countries in the dialogue in a flexible manner.

The project operates in three areas:

• It organises quarterly round tables where public institutions in the field of consumer protection, external experts and representatives of international organisations discuss selected consumer protection topics.
• It establishes regular workshops that enable in-depth exchange on round table topics.
• It participates in international conferences and consumer protection bodies of international organisations - such as the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.

Last update: November 2023