The Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) has published recommendations for a potential EU–U.S. Tech Dialogue, setting out key priorities to ensure that transatlantic cooperation delivers meaningful benefits for consumers.
TACD identifies four areas of common interest: preventing online scams, protecting minors and all users from harmful digital practices, tackling deceptive design, and strengthening cooperation on e-commerce, product safety and customs.
The recommendations highlight the need to address the privacy-eroding, addictive and engagement-driven business models that underpin many major digital platforms. The publication also calls for a clear and comprehensive prohibition of deceptive design across all digital services. It stresses that consumer protection must remain at the heart of cooperation on the growing volume of low-value e-commerce parcels and the associated risks of unsafe and non-compliant products.
For the dialogue to deliver lasting results, TACD urges the EU and the U.S. to ensure transparency and public scrutiny. Meeting agendas, progress reports and participant lists should be publicly available, while consumer and other public interest organisations should be regularly consulted and kept informed.
TACD emphasises that the dialogue should serve as a platform for sharing information, improving mutual understanding and exchanging good practices, not as a means of weakening laws or interfering with enforcement decisions adopted through legitimate domestic processes.
About TACD
Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue (TACD) is a forum of 70+ U.S. and EU consumer organizations which develops and agrees on joint consumer policy recommendations to the US government and European Union to promote the consumer interest in EU and U.S. policy making