At the beginning of this year, the classic range of Fanta juice, sold by the Coca-Cola company, attracted the attention of the State Consumer Service. ANPC then asked the European Commission to open an EU-wide investigation into three types of Fanta orange juice. The Romanian authorities argued that there would be differences in the formulation in terms of quality, although, in theory, they should be sold with the same composition in all European countries.

Double standards on food, a long-standing pet peeve of Romanians as discussed in the West and East series, remain a problem that has been solved on paper but not in practice. This is despite the fact that there is a year left before the entry into force of the European directive designed to prevent discrimination of European consumers. If, in theory, such a regulatory act should have dispelled discussions about the quality differences of products from the east and west of Europe, then in reality this did not happen.

Transposed into Romanian law, the directive looks very good, but has no effect because it is currently unenforceable. Likewise in other countries. A frequent story in the case of European files seized by populists, as is the debate about double standards. We have a laudable principle that works well politically, but which has so far proved difficult, if not impossible, to implement.

There is a high probability that it will be a long time before national authorities can have a really effective tool at their disposal to penalize deviations from manufacturers who are found to be substandard, depending on who their customer is.

The situation now is that we have not set a standard, we just don’t want it to be doubled. In particular, even if we have legislation against double standards, a European reference standard against which the law should be applied has not yet been defined.

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