Background

The European Parliament and the Council with Decision 1926/2006/EC have emphasized the need for information actions on consumer rights in the Member States that joined the European Union on 1 May 2004 and later.

Although the new MS have acquired the rights deriving from the EU legislation transposition, the level of awareness, confidence and empowerment of consumers still is relatively low. According to the Eurobarometer survey of April 2011, Romania is among the countries with the smallest overall number of empowered consumers.

The Consumer Policy Strategy 2007-2013 foresees actions related to consumer information as part of its priority Better informed and educated consumers. The overall EU information strategy aims to complement the efforts of the Member States.

In 2008 the Commission published a call for tender n° SANCO/2008/B6/23 for which no contract was attributed. Therefore the Executive Agency for Health and Consumers is republishing lot 3, lot 4 and the part concerning Romania of lot 5 of the former call for tender.

Call for tender n° EAHC/2011/CP/02

This call for tender is an action covered by Objective 2 of theWork Programme for 2011 dedicated to consumer information.

The global objective of the contract is:

– to improve general awareness of consumer rights and knowledge of some specific consumer rights deriving from EU legislation;

– to stimulate consumers to seek information and advice from consumer association(s) in asserting these rights,

– to give higher visibility to independent and representative national consumer association(s) with a view to increasing their membership.

The call for tender is divided into 3 lots:

– Lot 1: Development and implementation of a communication strategy, including focus group research, pre-testing, advertising and public relations actions.

– Lot 2: Advisory services for development of a communication strategy, development and distribution of 12 fact sheets on consumer rights.

– Lot 3: Advice and technical assistance for the implementation of lot 1 and lot 2.

The deadline to submit offers is 14th June 2011.

For more, visit: http://ec.europa.eu/eahc/consumers/consumers_tenders.html