21 April 2023, Budapest – The Family Friendly Working Group set up by the Hungarian Competition Authority (GVH) last year continues to work for Hungarian families. At the Friday's meeting of the inter-professional consultation forum set up by the Ministry of Justice to support the work of the Consumer Protection Roundtable, participants summarised the recent developments in consumer protection regulations and discussed further joint plans to support family-friendly legislation and enforcement.
In 2022, the national competition authority launched the Family Friendly Working Group, an inter-professional working forum involving both public bodies and NGOs, to facilitate the work of the Consumer Protection Roundtable set up by the Ministry of Justice. The aim of the working group is to make proposals to support legislation and enforcement aimed at protecting families and family relationships.
As part of the background work of the initiative, a number of forward-looking proposals and comments were made by the members of the working group, and new developments were also introduced in the legal framework in this area. The working group therefore met again on 21 April 2023 at the headquarters of the Hungarian Competition Authority to review all this and discuss their future plans.
GVH President Csaba Balázs Rigó suggested new topics for the working group's attention: “Surveys show that more and more children are playing video games on a daily basis. The video game industry has targeted our children with deceptive and aggressive advertising practices, by exploiting children's less developed cognitive abilities, and by distributing confusing virtual currencies. The other area is the secondary sale of holiday rights, which poses a number of risks for families often in a situation of duress."
The President of the GVH said that the Hungarian Competition Authority will soon launch its own market research (sweep) to map in detail the dangers of video games, and proposes to tighten consumer protection rules on holiday rights.
At the meeting, Nóra Kupecki, Deputy State Secretary for Constitutional Legislation and Consumer Protection of the Ministry of Justice, presented the recent developments in consumer protection legislation.
“Representing the interests and protecting the rights of families is a priority task for consumer protection, including the Consumer Protection Round Table. The Family Friendly Working Group contributes to this mission with its proposals, which we consider in our monitoring and legislative work. We are working to ensure that consumer protection provides real protection for Hungarian people, families, and children. Without children, we have no future, so our priority is to protect them in their everyday lives through increased controls and consumer awareness." - said Nóra Kupecki.
Following the summary, the members of the working group presented their proposals for improving enforcement and legislation and agreed on the way forward in their work on family-friendly consumer protection. In addition to the Hungarian Competition Authority and the Ministry of Justice, 13 other organisations are involved in the work of the Family Friendly Working Group, which supports the work of the Consumer Protection Roundtable.
GVH Public Service Communications and International Section
Further information:
Bálint Horváth, Head of Communication +36 20 238 6939