BROWN TELLS EUROPE TO SLASH HIGH PRICES

IRON Chancellor Gordon Brown is taking on the Euro price-fixers in a bid to save British families hundreds of pounds a year on consumer goods.

He wants to slash the price of food, cars, clothes CDs, hi-fis, videos, computers, tapes, televisions, tennis balls, sports goods and a host of other products.

The Chancellor is determined to break the price-fixing cartels which force people in the European Union countries to pay higher prices for consumer goods than people in the United States (as shown in our table above).

He also says reform of the Common Agricultural Policy could save the average British family up to pounds 80 a year on food bills.

Mr Brown, speaking at a EU finance ministers' meeting in York yesterday, said that prices in the EU are too high.

"In most cases prices are artificially high. We have a single market just as America has a single market. But in the US, customers pay much less for goods than in the EU. There is no justifiable reason for this."

EU finance ministers agreed to demand a major new report within 12 months that will list the problems and the price differences.

The price anomalies include: cassettes costing 13 per cent more than in the US; CDs at eight per cent higher; and sports goods at 10 per cent more. Designer label clothes can cost up to twice as much in Europe as they do in America. But there are also huge differences between prices within Europe.

A Fiat Punto costs 28.5 per cent more in the UK than in France, and a Renault Megan costs 22 per cent more in the UK than in Germany.

Bank charges in the UK are a fifth of those in France, but UK interests rates on overdrafts are two-and-a-half times higher.

Mr Brown told ministers at the York meeting that they must work together to make sure consumers in Europe are treated fairly. "Britain is determined to get a fair deal for the customer," he said.

"In far too many cases we are paying too much compared with the United States."

In advance of the European ministers' move he said the Treasury was already drawing up a list of prices comparing the US with Britain.

"The difference in prices has nothing to do with the level of the pound against the dollar, it is simply the prices that are charged.

"We want to end that by increasing competition and ending the system of artificially high prices.

"We are determined to fight for the consumer."

Mr Brown believes that with the UK holding the EU presidency he can force the issue to the top of the agenda.

His campaign is not limited to luxury goods.

Brown is targeting food prices which he maintains are being held artificially high by the Common Agriculture Policy.

He wants reforms that would allow food prices to find their own level on the international markets.

Copyright 1998 MGN LTD
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.