Corporate report

UK Presidency of ICPEN Report: 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2016

Published 30 June 2016

1. Foreword by Nisha Arora, ICPEN President, 2015 to 2016

Consumer protection agencies across the world all share the common goal of delivering first class outcomes for our consumers. Pooling our resources and working collaboratively to have maximum impact helps us achieve this.

The International Consumer Protection and Enforcement Network (ICPEN) is an important forum for such collaboration. Members work together to deliver ICPEN’s mission, ‘to protect consumers by encouraging and facilitating practical action to prevent cross-border marketing malpractice’. Through ICPEN, and by working together on issues that are affecting consumers worldwide, we can achieve greater impact in globalised markets, including the growing online environment, and so benefit all of our consumers.

In July 2015, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), at the start of its ICPEN Presidency, embarked on a mission to deliver ‘better enforcement together’ by setting three strategic goals. These were for ICPEN:

• to have a stronger focus on enforcement
• to deliver year-round activity with valuable work products and outcomes
• to increase capability to deliver work of benefit in the future

An additional goal for the CMA domestically was to use the Presidency to help our Trading Standards Services colleagues and other UK consumer partners engage more effectively with their international counterparts, and for UK consumer enforcement and advisory bodies to contribute to and learn from the experience of the ICPEN membership.

During the last 12 months, ICPEN has made good progress and achieved a great deal for the benefit of ICPEN members and, most importantly, for consumers. Members have worked together to deliver an ambitious year-round Programme of Work. For example:

• as a network we have published guidelines for businesses involved in the online review and endorsement sector – this will help businesses raise levels of compliance and, in turn, help to ensure that consumers can make informed choices when buying goods or services, for example booking accommodation or making a restaurant reservation
• we have shared our expertise to develop tools and resources for our members, such as enforcement toolkits on ‘international sporting events’ and ‘misleading advertising of prices’ – these will help enforcers in their daily work of taking action to protect consumers
• we have been learning from each other in webinars and workshops to keep up to date with advances in technology, so we can continue to protect consumers as business models and markets become increasingly technical

Information on these and some of ICPEN’s other achievements are set out in this first ‘Presidency Report’. I feel very proud and privileged to have been the President of such an enthusiastic and committed network of enforcers and am grateful for the significant efforts made by the membership.

The UK Presidency has been just one building block in ICPEN’s history. We have added to the great work delivered by the 2014-2015 Swedish Presidency, and other previous Presidencies – all of which have played significant roles in ICPEN’s development. If ICPEN is to reach its full potential, it needs to continue to raise its capability to tackle unfair trading practices to protect consumers.

I am looking forward to seeing further progress under the incoming German Presidency. I am confident that the new Presidency, with the continued commitment of the membership, will help ICPEN deliver first class outcomes to the benefit of our consumers in the future.

2. About ICPEN

ICPEN is a network of consumer protection law enforcement authorities from across the globe. It has a diverse membership of consumer enforcement bodies, with different powers and remits, from over 60 jurisdictions.^{[footnote 1]}

The 2014-2017 strategic objectives of ICPEN are:

• to generate and share information and intelligence on consumer protection issues
• to share best practice in legislative and enforcement approaches to consumer protection
• to take action to combat cross-border breaches of consumer protection laws
• to identify and promote measures for effective consumer protection enforcement
• to promote and encourage wider participation and cooperation with other consumer protection enforcement organisations
• to facilitate cross border remedies

All participation and cooperation is on an informal, voluntary basis.

Each year a different ICPEN member assumes the Presidency of ICPEN and leads the network for a 12 month period. The Presidency is supported by:

• a small group of members which form an Advisory Group
• three Steering Groups which coordinate ICPEN work and projects in the areas of Intelligence, Best Practices and Enforcement
• a Secretariat, which provides administrative support
• a Webmaster, which maintains ICPEN’s secure intranet and public internet sites

Individual projects are managed by Working Groups, led by and made up of ICPEN members who volunteer to participate.

3. UK Presidency of ICPEN

In October 2014, the CMA was successful in its application to assume the 2015-16 ICPEN Presidency on behalf of the UK, for the period 1 July 2015 to 30 June 2016.

Ahead of taking up the role, and under the banner of delivering ‘better enforcement together’ the UK set out three Presidency strategic goals:

• to have a stronger focus on enforcement
• to deliver year-round activity with valuable work products and outcomes
• to increase capability to deliver work of benefit in the future

On 1 July 2015, after consulting with the membership, the Presidency announced plans for a 2015-16 Programme of Work (PoW). This was developed using intelligence from ICPEN members and other international sources. It also made use of the important ‘prioritisation’ work undertaken by the previous Swedish Presidency.

This PoW included a broad spectrum of different activities and deliverables such as projects, physical meetings, webinars,^{[footnote 2]} and ‘programmatic work’, such as the bi-annual intelligence reviews.

Information is provided below on how we have delivered the Presidency’s three strategic goals through our PoW, and we’ve produced a short film capturing the year-round activity of the Network.

CMA ICPEN presidency

Goal One: To have a stronger focus on enforcement

Having a strong focus on enforcement is key to ICPEN achieving its mission.

Consumer protection agencies have different tools, powers and expertise with which to tackle the problems that consumers face. Despite these differences, we are often tackling similar issues or even the same businesses. It is therefore important that we coordinate our efforts.

There are already examples of bilateral cooperation. For example, in 2013-2015, the US Federal Trade Commission, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, the Danish Consumer Ombudsman, the CMA, the European Commission and others were all involved in campaigns and enforcement activity to prevent consumers losing out as a result of in-app purchases. The result was a change to Apple and Google’s payment authorisation processes. During 2015-2016, the CMA led Europe-wide work on short term car rental and engaged with consumer protection authorities in Canada and Australia, which have taken cases against some of the same companies.

One way of delivering enforcement is for members to work together on the same case at the same time, for example by taking joint enforcement action against a common target, such as a large multi-national company.

However, ‘enforcement’ does not always mean taking court action; there are other ways on which we can work together to change businesses’ behaviour. For example, on 30 June 2016, ICPEN, under the CMA’s presidency, published guidelines to help business comply with consumer protection law in relation to online reviews and endorsements (see Figure 2 below).

Members working collaboratively on an issue that is of concern to a number of them can also facilitate enforcement. For example, individual agencies through ICPEN can increase capability and achieve greater impact for consumers by:

• sharing intelligence
• sharing experience about how to address issues
• to the extent possible, coordinating enforcement activities or taking joint actions

This year ICPEN has delivered four projects to support our enforcement goal:

• misleading advertising of prices (MAP)
• online reviews and endorsements (ORE)
• international sporting events
• complaints analysis

Misleading advertising of prices

In recent years, the misleading advertising of prices has been identified as a significant issue for many ICPEN members. Misleading pricing practices, and the corresponding marketing and advertising, creates an impact on local, national, regional and international markets, both online and in ‘bricks and mortar’. Shared understanding of these practices, their prevalence, the impact they have on consumer choice and the solutions for tackling those practices can lead to positive outcomes for consumer welfare. It can also have benefits for competition in the market, levelling the playing field for retailers.

During the UK Presidency, ICPEN members have worked together on a MAP project. The main stages of the MAP project are shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Misleading advertising of pricing project

Two annual ICPEN initiatives, the ‘internet sweep’ and ‘Fraud Prevention Month’ (ICPEN’s annual consumer education activity) were directly linked to this project, and used to help deliver it.

During the sweep, ICPEN members reviewed a range of websites to identify fraudulent, deceptive or unfair conduct online. Members prioritised:

• drip pricing in travel and tourism
• e-commerce subscription traps (health/beauty, diet/weight loss/muscle gain)

25 members participated and analysed 1,565 websites.

For the annual Fraud Prevention Month campaign, which most members held during March, members focused on informing consumers about online malpractice, with an emphasis on ‘drip pricing’ and ‘subscription traps’. Many used local domestic partners to help cascade these and other consumer education messages.

The CMA published a blog for Fraud Prevention Month which highlighted our updated messages for consumers renting cars and the work of UK Trading Standards on subscription traps, as well as activities taking place around the world.

As a result of this project:

• ICPEN members have gathered and shared intelligence on common problematic practices, and also shared experience on how to tackle these
• consumers across the world have been informed about misleading pricing practices

This will lead to good outcomes for consumers; they are better placed to know what pricing practices to watch out for and enforcers are better equipped to take enforcement action when necessary.

Building on the focus on pricing at the Best Practice Workshop, a toolkit for enforcers investigating misleading pricing issues is being developed and will soon be available to ICPEN members.

“The Network’s focus on highly topical substantive areas of consumer protection (pricing and ORE) has helped our agency’s analysis of these issues in our own work.”

ICPEN member

Online reviews and endorsements

Increasingly, consumers look at online user reviews and endorsements before they make a decision to purchase a product or service. As a result, reviews and endorsements have become a vital part of the online economy. It is important that the information which consumers get is honest, accurate and is a source of information they can trust.

A number of consumer protection authorities around the world identified several concerns about online reviews and endorsements. To address these, the UK Presidency prioritised a new project on ORE within its PoW. The main stages of this project are shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2: Online reviews and endorsements project

On 30 June 2016 ICPEN published ORE guidelines for:

• review administrators
• traders and marketers
• digital influencers

These documents set out guidance and key principles to help those operating in the online reviews and endorsements industry.

These documents will help provide businesses, wherever in the world they are based, with a guide to help them operate fairly and ensure consumers get the trusted information they need to make informed decisions.

“Pricing practices and online reviews are fields where problems are universal…finding common solutions and approaches is especially important. ICPEN working as a united front gives us smaller countries an opportunity to help change matters on a bigger scale.”

ICPEN member

International Sport Events

In recent years, many consumers have been victims of ticketing scams online, paying for tickets that do not exist, being refused entry to an event because they don’t have a valid ticket, or being tricked into revealing their payment card details to an identity thief or fraudster. In addition to being disappointed and inconvenienced, these practices can also result in consumers losing a substantial amount of money.^{[footnote 3]}

To address these problems ICPEN members:

• developed a toolkit for enforcers, which provides information about the different tactics employed to tackle online ticket fraud, and includes criteria for taking down websites that commit malpractice for use by enforcement bodies in the ICPEN network
• wrote to ticket resellers asking them to take steps to protect consumers from fraudulent or misleading sales
• developed a consumer education strategy

The toolkit and other activities were completed in September 2015 and disseminated to the Network. A number of agencies have been making use of the toolkit in their ongoing work tackling secondary ticket fraud.

Consumer complaints analysis

Gathering and sharing intelligence such as complaint data helps consumer protection agencies identify the greatest sources of consumer detriment. It also helps them decide where to focus limited resources, and indicates what areas may require action in the future.

International complaint databases and portals, such as econsumer.gov, and domestic databases, contain valuable intelligence and information. The Working Group has reviewed complaints to identify commonly complained-about practices and traders to consider whether enforcement action should be taken. The Working Group continues to:

• analyse complaint data to identify common themes and priorities for enforcement
• plan enforcement actions
• provide training on complaints analysis, investigating and prosecuting matters
• coordinate related consumer education materials

“[ICPEN membership] benefits include access to complaints and reports from consumers and government bodies through econsumer.gov and Consumer Sentinel for enforcement purposes and case building.”

ICPEN member

Work on this project has not yet concluded. The Working Group’s plans include action and activity in the four key complaints categories identified: e-commerce, financial/business matters, imposter scams, and health-related scams. Further, announcements on this work are expected to be made at the next ICPEN Conference in Germany in September 2016.

Delivery of core projects

Case officers with hands-on enforcement experience have delivered these four projects (and other work). They have worked together virtually throughout the year (for example by teleconferencing and email) and by coming together at ICPEN’s ‘Best Practice Workshop’ in October 2015.

This three-day workshop brought together 120 case officers from 41 jurisdictions (including 11 UK Trading Standards Services Officers). The workshop enabled participants to pool expertise and knowledge. Participants developed a wide range of useful products and toolkits (such as the ORE Toolkit) to help officers from all over the world in their day to day enforcement work (see Figure 3 below for more information).

Additionally, in January 2016, as a separate UK initiative to promote cross-border enforcement, the CMA organised and hosted an event for its UK partners on the topic of ‘Protecting UK consumers in global markets’. This brought together colleagues from UK agencies, consumer bodies, and a small number of international partners to share best practice in consumer protection and enforcement work.

49 delegates attended. They shared expertise on issues such as identifying consumer problems and how international networks can help enforcers investigate international matters, and built new cross-border contacts.

Goal One: Summary

Enforcers have worked together to deliver valuable work to help them in their daily work to protect consumers. A strong focus on enforcement has been delivered by:

• focusing on particular misleading or otherwise unfair business practices in key sectors of the economy that have a significant impact on consumers
• sharing intelligence and best practice
• agreeing a common approach

Ultimately, this means that consumers are better protected, wherever businesses are located.

Goal Two: To deliver year-round activity with valuable work products and outcomes

In recent years, ICPEN has taken a ‘project management’ approach to delivering work. This has been a significant shift from its formative years, when most ICPEN engagement and activity was focused around conferences.

The UK Presidency has built on this project management approach by developing its PoW, in order to prioritise and deliver outcomes that really matter to ICPEN members and consumers. This PoW has capitalised on the wealth of expertise in ICPEN’s diverse membership, and also the expertise of others outside the Network.

The Best Practice Workshop (Manchester, October 2015) and an Annual Conference (London April 2016) have been incredibly useful elements of the PoW because they have enabled international experts to discuss important consumer protection work face-to-face.

“Best Practice Workshop gave us many new ideas especially on intelligence gathering and other online tools and we have been actively working on taking up these tools to improve and enhance our enforcement work. Also several webinars have given us valuable new information and knowledge which we would not have obtained otherwise.”

Best Practice Workshop delegate

However, given only a small number of members are able to attend physical meetings, webinars have become an increasingly useful part of the PoW. Webinars provide a way to share experience and update members on important developments in other countries. There have been 11 webinars during the UK Presidency – these have been delivered by ICPEN members and also representatives of other networks and organisations. They have enabled members to discuss and learn about issues such as drip pricing in travel and tourism, analysing consumer complaints for domestic and cross-border cases and how to use open source intelligence tools.

“The webinars have been fantastic […] There was a great variety of topics, ranging from lessons learned/best practices to more technical training. Sharing knowledge, training and tools is a vital part of ICPEN, and extremely beneficial to organisational growth.”

ICPEN member

Figure 3 shows the number and variety of elements that have contributed to the overall PoW, and when they have been delivered.

Goal Two: Summary

Year-round work has allowed a wider range of consumer protection officials to participate in ICPEN’s activities, meaning more enforcers, and particularly case officers, have better access to the wealth of information in the Network. Regular activity between physical meetings has helped maintain the momentum of delivery beyond physical meetings.

Goal Three: To increase capability to deliver work of benefit in the future

This goal has two elements:

• for ICPEN to help individual ICPEN members build their own capability, regardless of how developed they are as an agency
• to ensure that ICPEN as a network is well equipped and resilient for the future and that experiences of undertaking roles within the network are shared

ICPEN’s enforcement focus and year-round delivery of valuable work (Goals One and Two) have undoubtedly contributed to increasing the overall capacity and capability of individual agencies.

“In 2015, ICPEN was our central forum for worldwide inspiration, learning and information sharing.”

ICPEN member

The physical meetings mentioned under Goal One and the three-day annual ICPEN conference (April 2016) has also helped to deliver this goal. At this conference, the Presidency brought together 106 Heads of Agency and senior officials and other guests from 46 jurisdictions to:

• share innovative and inspirational ideas on achieving compliance and change with impact
• equip themselves with information on how to keep pace with a changing environment. This included examining issues such as embracing technology, operating in a digital environment and the opportunities and challenges presented by social media

Additionally, at an ICPEN High Level Meeting (April 2016), heads of consumer protection agencies from across the globe discussed the value of international networks and planned ICPEN’s future strategy.

Encouraging active participation from a wide range of members in the PoW has been an overarching goal of the Presidency. Active participation benefits individual agencies, and also helps to ensure members gain experience of undertaking different roles within the network, building capability, resilience and better outcomes.

Levels of participation during the UK Presidency have been particularly encouraging. By the end of the UK Presidency, 43 members had been actively involved in ICPEN work, either by undertaking roles or being involved in Working Groups. Figure 4 below provides further information.

Additionally, these and other members have actively participated in conference calls, webinars and physical meetings throughout the year.

ICPEN membership has also increased during the UK Presidency – consumer protection bodies from the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia became ICPEN partners, the first step to membership, in January and June 2016 respectively.

Figure 4: ICPEN Working Groups

Working Group	Lead(s)	Participants
Online reviews and enforcement	Australia, Denmark, United Kingdom	Belgium, Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, Vietnam, United States
Misleading advertising of prices	Canada	Australia, Canada, Germany, Kenya, Netherlands, New Zealand, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States, Zambia
International sporting events and online ticket fraud	Belgium, United Kingdom	Chile, Costa Rica, Hungary, Israel, Netherlands
Consumer complaints project	Australia, Canada, United States	Chile, Kenya, Netherlands, New Zealand, Peru, Sweden, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam
Econsumer.gov	United States	Econsumer.gov members: Australia, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Philippines, Poland, South Korea, Spain, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, United States, Zambia and the OECD
Revisions to ICPEN’s Memorandum of Establishment	Netherlands
Review of ICPEN Alert mechanism	Germany
UK Presidency Advisory Group	Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, United States, Zambia
Secretariat	United States (until 30 April 2016); Belgium (from 1 July 2016)
Best Practice Steering Group Leads	Belgium and Zambia
Enforcement Steering Group Lead	United States
Intelligence Steering Group Leads	Australia, New Zealand
ICPEN Webmaster	Poland (until October 2015); Australia (from October 2015)
Fraud Prevention Month Lead	Peru
Internet sweep co-ordinator	Canada

There have also been a number of other pieces of work which have helped ICPEN build itself as a network and ‘increase capability to deliver work of benefit in the future’. These include:

• a refresh of econsumer.gov, a website that enables consumers to report cross-border consumer complaints and enables enforcement agencies to gather and share cross-border complaints, see alerts, and spot complaint trends^{[footnote 4]}
• changes to the finance provisions of ICPEN’s Memorandum of Establishment, the document that sets out the framework in which ICPEN operates
• a review of an internal ICPEN Alert system, which led to making changes to improve the system and recommendations for future upgrade

Work has also been started to review ICPEN’s intranet and its intelligence gathering systems, with a view making improvements to these during the German Presidency.

The UK Presidency Team has also drafted a Presidency toolkit to help other members undertaking the role in the future. This covers issues such as developing a PoW, organising physical meetings, and staffing a Presidency project team.

Goal Three: Summary

A diverse range of members has actively participated in ICPEN activities and, through this, members have increased our capabilities as individual agencies. Members have willingly volunteered to take up new corporate roles and responsibilities, and so helped ensure ICPEN as a network is well equipped for the future.

4. ICPEN going forward

On 1 July 2016, the Federal Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection, Germany, will take up the role of Presidency from the CMA, UK. This will be for a one year period, and then, on 1 July 2017, the Presidency will transfer to the Ministry of Customs and Trade, Turkey.

Both agencies are preparing for their respective Presidencies. The German Presidency has consulted with ICPEN members to develop its 2016-2017 PoW and will start to deliver this from July 2016 onwards. The Turkey Presidency Team is in direct contact with the German and UK Teams and is keen to work closely alongside them to prepare for 2017.

Collaborating in this way, as the previous Swedish Presidency did with the UK Team, helps ensure consistency in approach and delivery, longer term stability for ICPEN and, ultimately, better results for consumers.

“I am very happy to take up the role of ICPEN President from Nisha Arora and keen to build on the CMA’s excellent work during the upcoming German ICPEN Presidency. The strategic steer the CMA has provided to the network in the past year has paved a solid way for our Programme of Work to make the German Presidency’s mission, ‘Uniting enforcers – Protecting consumers’, come true.”

Ilona Ulich, Incoming ICPEN President, German Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection

5. Conclusion

This report sets out some of ICPEN’s recent achievements. It does not, and cannot, capture all of the value ICPEN has delivered for its members and for consumers over the last 12 months. Work products are easy to record. Many other important benefits of ICPEN, such as the invaluable links forged with counterparts and ensuing bilateral cooperation, are not as easy to document.

As an agency, the CMA has learned a great deal from the strength of ICPEN’s diverse membership and depth of its experience. These benefits have also been enjoyed by many other UK consumer protection enforcers and bodies.

Feedback gathered from ICPEN members throughout the Presidency shows that members:

• benefit from the intelligence and information sharing opportunities ICPEN affords
• support developing an intelligence-based and focused PoW
• value year-round work deliverables and communication, rather than solely focusing on exchanging information at conferences
• use ICPEN to help deliver enforcement and consumer protection in their jurisdictions

Holding the Presidency has enabled the UK to take a lead role in maintaining momentum in the Network’s development and helping its capability grow. We have built on the work of previous Presidencies and, we hope, laid further foundations for future Presidencies by achieving the three strategic goals we set ourselves at the start of our Presidency to help ICPEN deliver ‘better enforcement together’.

6. Acknowledgements

The CMA would like to thank all those who have helped the UK deliver a successful Presidency. This includes international and UK colleagues who have undertaken key roles, all those who have participated in the PoW, or contributed to delivering our strategic goals in other ways.

1. As at 30 June 2016 the Members, Partners and Observers of ICPEN are: Angola, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Egypt, El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Korea, Kosovo, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Seychelles, Slovakia, Spain, Suriname, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam, Zambia, European Commission, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Ibero-American Forum of Consumer Government Agencies (FIAGC). ↩

2. A presentation or seminar transmitted over the Web using video conferencing software. ↩

3. For example, according to the Annual Fraud Indicator published in June 2013 by the UK National Fraud Authority, an estimated 2.3 million people in the UK fall victim to online ticket fraud each year, resulting in losses of £1.5 billion. ↩

4. In October 2015, the website (which is now sponsored by 36 countries and is available in eight languages) was refreshed with a new look and to make it more user friendly and reader-friendly on tablets and smart phones. In addition to promoting the updated website publicly, members have been accessing training on how to make best use of Econsumer.gov data. ↩