Transatlantic Consummer Dialogue (TACD)

Listening to consumers

The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue is a forum of US and EU consumer organizations which develops and agrees joint consumer policy recommendations to the US government and European Union to promote the consumer interest in EU and US policy making.

It is in the context of the New Transatlantic Agenda (launched in 1995) and in particular of the New Economic Partnership (launched in 1998), that the TACD, along with several other transatlantic dialogues, was born. In launching the NTA and the TEP, the governments of the EU and US had for the first time pledged their support to an increased involvement of civil society in transatlantic policy-making.

The TACD was launched in September 1998, at the end of the inaugural meeting which took place in Washington and gathered more than 60 consumer representatives from the US and the EU.

To provide a formal mechanism for EU and US consumer representatives to input to EU and US political negotiations and agreements as well as explore ways of strengthening the EU and US consumer view at the international level.

The TACD endeavors to feed into the TEP process by looking closely at the agenda of the various TEP committees and responding on the issues which concern consumers directly. Other policy-making processes, such as those at the OECD or WTO, are also being closely followed. The TACD regularly issues statements and recommendations on important food, e-commerce, intellectual property and trade issues such as GM foods, growth hormones, the precautionary principle, consumer protection in e-commerce, data privacy protection, fair trade and eco-labeling, access to medicines, and so on.

TACD held its 8th Annual Meeting in Brussels on March 10 - 13, 2007 . The Meeting included discussions with EC and US Government officials, a public workshop on RFID and Ubiquitous Computing, and internal TACD meetings.