About the regulation
Regulation (EU) 2017/2394 on cooperation between national authorities responsible for the enforcement of consumer protection laws and repealing Regulation (EC) No 2006/2004 (the CPC Regulation) lays down a cooperation framework to allow national authorities from all countries in the European Economic Area to jointly address breaches of consumer rules when the trader and the consumer are established in different countries.
Collectively, the national authorities form a European enforcement network, the "CPC Network".
National enforcement authorities have strong powers to address unlawful practices and identify rogue traders. They can request information from domain registrars and banks to detect the identity of the responsible trader, carry out mystery shopping, for example, to check geographical discrimination or after-sales conditions, and to order the immediate take-down of websites hosting scams.
The European Commission coordinates the cooperation between these authorities to ensure that consumer rights legislation is applied and enforced in a consistent manner across the Single Market. It can alert the CPC network and coordinate EU-wide enforcement action to tackle practices which harm a large majority of EU consumers. Authorities can accept commitments from the businesses concerned that they will correct their practices, provide remedies and compensation to the consumers affected. With the entry into application of the Directive on enforcement and modernisation of consumer law the sanction could reach at least 4% of the turnover of the businesses in the Member States concerned.
The list of CPC authorities, single liaison offices, designated bodies and entities issuing external alerts can be found on the webpage of the Consumer Protection Cooperation Network.