Educating tomorrow's consumers

EU consumers are bombarded with messages, advice and warnings.

Consumer education is crucial in helping them make meaningful choices and use their rights when faced with that information overload.

We need to start consumer education at an early age, to influence the skills, attitudes and knowledge of the next generation of consumers. But there is also the issue of "lifelong learning".

The workshop

Join the European Commission to tackle the challenges of consumer education and help define future actions to be taken in this field.

The main issues which we would like to address:

• Do consumers want to be educated ? When and where do they want to be educated?
• Evidence from recent behavioural economics studies say consumer education does not work. Is that true?  Is there evidence to prove the contrary?
• What should be the role of  EU ? Should the EU take over the task of educating consumers in countries where national authorities dont or do so insufficiently? 
• What are best practices in consumer education? Which national best practices can be identified? 
• Which are the best tools to attract user attention? Should the education products be presented differently and more tailored to different target users? What should the next generation of consumer education tools look like?
• How to increase the outreach of educational actions?
• What is the most cost-effective use of educational tools and how best to achieve synergies?
• Which future educational action will best ensure the EU added value?

The Commission invites consumer organisations, NGOs, business organisations, public bodies and academics to join this highly participatory workshop and to contribute their experiences, best practices and ideas

The outcomes will feed into the upcoming Consumer Policy Strategy post 2013.

We look forward to a lively exchange of views – both online and in person.

Background: the state of play

The European Commission currently supports a number of consumer education tools, all of which are being evaluated this year.

• The Europa Diary is a school diary aimed at students between the ages of 15 and 18, helping young people to become more aware of their rights and provide them with information on topics such as health or food safety and sustainable consumption, and enabling them to make more informed decisions as consumers.  More info on Diary
• Dolceta is a web-based tool which offers consumer education modules targeted at teachers and trainers, as well as consumers. More info on Dolceta
• The European Integrated Master Programmes  offer skills to future professionals to work as multipliers of consumer policy at NGOs, and in public and business sectors. More info on Masters

- Education