The Government of the Azores will develop from October, in a partnership with the University of the Azores, a postgraduate degree on Consumer Law, which was announced today by the Regional Secretary for Labour and Social Solidarity after a meeting with the European Commissioner for Consumer Defence.
This postgraduate degree aims to provide further skills to Regional Administration technicians and Azorean Jurists regarding this subject.
Providing the Regional Inspectorate of Economic Activities with more technical and human resources and a greater connection with the Government’s policies, thus ensuring to the consumer the quality of the goods and services provided, developing partnerships with Consumer Defence Associations both in consumer information campaigns and in conciliation structures for consumer-related disputes, implementing awareness programmes regarding consumers’ rights among youngsters in vocational training and secondary education are among the measures announced by Ana Paula Marques.
According to the Secretary, “this new philosophy of action that is related to the Consumer Defence issues also aims to ensure the consumers, the quality of the goods and services that were acquired, and to make citizens and companies aware of the consumer rights and obligations.”
Ana Paula Marques reassured the Azorean Government’s intention to create a Regional mediation service for consumer-related disputes, which will provide legal and technical support to consumers and companies.
In the context of consumer defence, the Regional Secretary mentioned several initiatives undertaken by the Azorean Government regarding this area, such as carrying out a cycle of seminars on “Educação para a sociedade de Consumo” (Education for the Consumer Society), which mobilised a vast group of schools in the previous legislative period, and all the Food Safety and Quality Promotion programmes (Seprouqual).
According to Ana Paula Marques, the Seprouqual programme made possible the training of two thousand workers and 800 companies. This programme “was a major asset to the restaurant sector and to the small industrial companies that belong to the food industry, regarding the development and implementation of self-control systems, food safety and the awareness raising campaigns addressed at the companies’ quality managers.”