North Macedonia approves amendments to consumer protection law

With a majority vote of deputies, the Parliament of North Macedonia approved the draft law on consumer protection, proposed by VMRO-DPMNE deputies, CE Report quotes Kosova Press.

The changes to the law provide for a legal obligation for retailers, whether small, medium, or large, to publish and update the prices of each product they sell on their websites every day. Compliance with this legal norm will be supervised by the Market Inspectorate, which will have the possibility of imposing fines. This, as the proposer Bojan Stojanovski said, is done so that citizens can choose which product in which market they will buy. He warned of an audit for both white goods sellers and pharmacies.

"Now that our social interest is to protect the standard of citizens, it is not an essential interest for this commercial chain to bring money to the Government, to sponsor football players in institutions, to sponsor the top scorer who is now on the blacklist, as they did until now, it can no longer be and it is not like "until now". They must understand that if they are not responsible, in this country there are institutions that want social justice instead of their money", said Bojan Stojanovski - VMRO-DPMNE.

SDSM MPs did not participate in either the committees or the plenary session, although they previously criticized the measure as not bringing any good to citizens. In the Committee on Economic Affairs, they had the opportunity to submit amendments.

This draft law is a continuation of the Government's measures after it previously also imposed a freeze on gross profit margins for markets and 102 product groups. A margin of 5% was imposed for eight basic products, 55% for 10 product groups, and 39% for 15 product groups. Traders did not welcome these measures, saying that they would find it difficult to survive. But previously, when the "New Year's basket" measure was imposed and they were allowed to choose how much they would reduce prices, they misused this measure and manipulated prices.

A similar law on price publication was also adopted in Croatia last week. The legal changes also set price limits for the most important products.