In an economy whose key features are defined nowadays by the dispersion of the markets, the flow of capitals at transnational level, the incessant appearance of new financial products, the vertiginous development of technological tools and the removal of the citizen from the political centres of decision making, the task of relocating the consumer as citizen protagonist of the productive and commercial process, become not only a formal exigency demanded by the laws, but the determining nucleus of the good health of a social and economic model.

The financial normative system of a market, like the European, plans to be Unitarian, is one of the elements considered essential by the economic actors so that that geographic area is constituted in preferred objective for services lenders and serves to define this market as modern. Such characteristic of modernity, however, would lack the consistency and the rigor necessaries without a suitable level of confidence that inspires security to the consumers as main operators of this market. For that reason the existence of a solid and effective normative frame that guarantees the users of financial services rights is fundamental.

That one economic area in continuous development, as it is the European single market, have a legal regulation that it suitably guarantees the protection of the economic rights of the users of financial goods and services, demands as added note of maturity, the active participation of these, mainly through the associative model that articulates the civil voice of the consumer citizens. In front of the true avalanche that constitutes the new economy, the consumers and their Associations we must be more than ever in alert, conscious and responsible for our own rights and unique defenders of them. This is, indeed, the spirit, which animates this work.

The final result of this task, in which the File Permanent Forum of National and European Legislation constitutes its first link, must contribute in a decisive way to create an authentic European permanent and compact network of study and monitoring of the financial market: indicating the gaps that affect the rights of the users of these services, and also dictating criteria that should be considered by the legislator in the construction of a real European social space for the consumers, conform the fundamental challenges of this Permanent Forum.

The result of this File will be the work creation of a group of legal and economic experts in consumption problems, that periodically give off critical reports on national and European regulation, and the market practices in certain goods and services of consumption which generate controversy and damages to the consumers, and that they are presents in our countries.

The objective is to generate a tool that gathers legal and economic arguments for the consumer defence in concrete consumption problems, so that these arguments generate a continuous discussion between consumption professionals, being promoted the administrative controls and regulatory changes in favour of the consumers, and allows the consumers organizations to undertake collective defenses of the consumers starting off of legal and economic reasoning which beforehand denounce general situations of damage to the consumers, and to mobilize themselves joining the consumers harmed in its defense through legal and judicial actions, as well as preventing and avoiding these situations through cessation actions.

It is evident that the present system suffers of a deeply study on the side of consumers, because the legal supports that receive the consumers associations are not always as integrated in them as going far away in the legislation and advance the problems that could happen to consumers due to that legislation establishes some important points in ambiguous way or allowing the companies to save the law for doing the same activities harming the consumers.

So, the experience observed in Spain and in all the European Union, that reveals the slowness and lack of capacity of reaction of the consumers, their organizations and their administrations, as opposed to collective cases of economic damage for consumers when a existing consumer problem is discovered in a difficult moment to be repaired (Examples: Values Agency AVA and GESCARTERA, Investment Agencies Investahorro , Retirement Plans Intercaser, Investments in Philatelia BANFISA, consumption credits tin English academies, - Opening, Oxford, Wall Street, Cambridge -, small shareholders of TERRA and RECOL NETWORK, structured deposits of Caja Rural de Valencia, Savings bank of Navarre, BBVA, and others, etc.) they show the necessity of giving legal and economic arguments addressed to the consumers defense so that the consumer organizations and the consumption administrations know how to react in these cases and preventing them through cessation actions, inspection, and controls of the Institutions of control. For that reason, a work index has been settled down that we are thinking answers the necessities and worries of users in the present financial market.

The tendency to fix a European common legislation, causes the legislation establishment and agreements of minimum, allowing or not, depending on the cases, that will be the States which extend the consumers protection, causing themselves in this way a greater harmonization but pushing or providing an excuse to the Lobbies in the companies to request less strict national legislation, based on the harmonization of European legislation, like for example the agreement of good practices in transparency of mortgage credits, that in some cases have generated the attempt to reduce the guarantees for consumers.

In addition, the lack of European legislation level in some fields, make that every state reacts in a different way against the consumers problems, based on the sensitivity that it has towards that certain problem, generating differences of protection to the consumers depending on the countries, and lack of communication between the consumer associations in an international area trying to obtain that in their States norms similar to the obtained ones in other States will be applied, like for example, the existence of a Overindebteness Law in France and Belgium, with a beneficial character for consumers, but which is non-existent in other many countries in Europe.

These problems require the coordination in the study of the consumer problems of the on the side of jurists, economists, university professors, etc. and the consumer associations, this study must be permanent, deep, and with high dedication of all.

In addition these problems require the coordination in the study of representatives of the different European countries that contribute the legal situation of the consumer in their country, its problems, and the given solutions. And also the study must be permanent, deep, and with high dedication.

This coordination and collaboration between consumer associations is generated at the moment shyly through projects of supranational collaboration, through European federations of consumer associations, and through the committees and work groups of the European Commission, in which they meet the representatives of the different countries, specially for consultation and formation on the application of the legislation and performances at European level.

In the present situation of the consumer associations and its influence in the national and European legislation, the consumer associations need a point of reference that in name of the consumers, deeply studies the problems of these and the legislation that regulates them at international level, and that takes a position of absolute radicalism in defence of the consumer interests at European level, with a solid basis of legal study.

The radicalism of the positions of this file, in favour of the consumer interests is necessary, since it must push with force the associations of consumers to vindicate the protection of the consumers in the European and national legislation, and therefore must generate great and varied vindications in favour of the consumers, that later the associations can do hers or reject, but always from the point of view of until where their vindications can arrive.

In spite of the mentioned radicalism, the present work is addressed to the attainment of an authentic single market of financial services and other services, a unique market for and with the consumers. For it is based on four basic instruments gathered in the proposal of the Green Book for the Consumer Protection in the European Union, of which we emphasized for this project point three.

The rules that in the financial services sector regulate the economy, and therefore the consumer life, is doubtless that every day come more from the European institutions than from the own national organisms.

The attempt of integration of the financial markets in Europe is not doubtable, but it is not clear which are throughout this process of integration of the financial markets the benefits of the consumers. In this situation, the consumer associations, in their activity of consumer defense we should make a new challenge: the European perspective, from here the necessity to approach, like we have done in this file, the subjects that affect to the consumers from an European perspective and avoiding the partiality of a national study.

The tendencies propose by the theoreticians of the policies, more and more made from an European scope, are based in the economic deregulation, the exhibition to the concurrence of the protected areas, the privatization of public companies, the application of private management formula to the administrative performances (clear example of it are the Funds of Guarantee), and the reversion to the deprived initiative of many social projects before statics. As is easily comprehensible, these phenomena - specially the privatization of public companies and the private management and mixed of public services are translated, in one side to an important demand of capitals through the financial markets, but by another one in a greater insecurity of the consumers, that must be palliated through initiatives like this one.

This integration process of the European markets is framed within a ampler concept as is the globalization, concept this that is identified with the increasing interdependence of the national economies, caused by the volume increase and the variety of the transnational transactions of goods or services, as well as by the vertiginous increase of the international flows of capitals and by the accelerated and generalized diffusion of the technology. The constant technological advances together with this capacity of the capitals to move quickly produce the consumer’s necessity to adapt to more complex changes every day.

The markets integration has allowed the diversification of the portfolio of investments towards moved away circuits of the habitual ones, the exponential growth of the international flows of capitals, as well as the speed in which these investments are done, causes that volatileness is the norm. This protagonism of the financial economy has been translated in a greater integration and convergence of the national financial systems and, we cannot forget it, in a greater complexity for the consumer, with all what it entails.

The financial services and goods constitute an area with a vast potential, vital market for the good operation of the European economy. In this point the States Members and the EU continue having a great challenge ahead: to reconcile a high protection of the consumer (condictio sine quae non to obtain the consumer confidence, on that at the end, the stability of the financial markets is based) with the necessity that the sector can satisfy the changing and more and more sophisticated necessities of the financial intermediaries and the consumers.

Therefore the still pending norm that allows the liberalization of the financial services must fulfil the following requirements:

1º An harmonization of the norms necessary to guarantee the honesty and the security in the sector, as well as a simplification of the same ones to protect the users of the financial services and to guarantee conditions of right concurrence that can benefit all the implied agents.

2º Mutual recognition of the national norms, that continues in force in the acceptance of the principle of "control in the origin country" as for the services that are provided in a communitarian scale.

3º A certain degree of cooperation to facilitate this control on the financial services provided in another state member.

4º Special attention to the EU enlargement in 2004 to assure the reception of the norms of regulation the financial markets in the new countries of the enlargement.

To all these legal requirements should be jointed concepts of: active consumer, and formation and information to the consumer that must know which are their rights and must have effective channels to exert them. Really, it is necessary to create a real "consumers pole", not as confrontation, but as factor of balance of the great financial companies.

Manuel Pardos Vicente
President of ADICAE