Interview: Higher food and energy prices here to stay[fr][de] 

Many new challenges have emerged since Jim Murray took up the job of BEUC Director in 1990, a position he is now leaving after eighteen years. Chief among those, he says, is the protection of consumer rights in an online world which is going beyond mere audio-visual entertainment to include information, culture and education.

"Digital rights are indeed new but the term is not really adequate to encompass all the recent changes related to information technology," says Murray. "With the internet and e-mail we have to face the challenges of electronic commerce, IP rights, governance, globalisation" and the process of "disintermediation" whereby consumers are increasingly buying directly online instead of through a retailer, travel agent or other intermediary.

Moving on to the emerging challenge of energy, Murray admits that liberalisation "can sometimes bring price increases for domestic consumers", but said that he very much doubted that the Commission’s energy liberalisation policy was to blame.

Instead, "the main factor seems to be the price of oil, which is itself influenced by economic and non-economic factors, including political ones", he says. 

However, he does warn that energy suppliers may be tempted to overcharge "relatively captive" domestic consumers in a market still dominated by a handful of powerful players. "BEUC would not generally favour direct price controls but there may be a case for some limited price caps for domestic consumers in the early days of liberalisation of the energy markets," he says.

Another emerging challenge is food with prices of daily commodities such as milk and wheat coming under increasing strain during 2007, partly due to surging global demand (EurActiv 5/09/07). However, he seems more pessimistic on that issue. "It seems that the price of food is likely to increase for some time for a variety of reasons," he says.

In his eighteen-year tenure at BEUC, Murray has seen the EU evolve from a 12-member community to a 27-strong Union and experienced no less than thirty-four presidencies. It was hard to resist asking him for a few anecdotes.

"There has been no single pattern to them," Murray recalls, admitting however that "some have been embarrassing".

"In one case the minister started to read his speech for another delegation until stopped by his civil servants. In another, the minister spent most of the meeting looking at one of my female colleagues."

However, he believes presidencies have evolved, becoming more "serious" over the years, as the number of dossiers to be managed under the co-decision procedure has grown. 

"Generally, smaller member states were more 'presidential', [while] the bigger ones often tended to see the presidency as an opportunity to push their own agendas."

To read the interview in full, please click here.