As part of the celebrations for the ECC-Net's 10th anniversary (on 2 June 2015), the UK European Consumer Centre has looked at which countries UK consumers complain most about and where complaints about UK traders most regularly come from.

The UK ECC is part of the ECC-Network, which is made up of 30 centres throughout Europe. We are a network and all work together to produce a better result for consumers, but the nature of complaints means that there are some countries with whom we work more often than others.

Although the ECC-Net has been going for 10 years, the UK ECC itself only started in 2007. Since then our consumer advisors have shared cases from UK consumers with all other centres and we have also received cases regarding UK traders from all other centres within the network. This highlights a strength of the European Union to both UK consumers and UK traders.

We either handle basic advice cases (where a consumer lodged a complaint against a trader based in another European country and we provided tailored advice to help the consumer resolve their complaint) or assistance cases (where we sought the help of our ECC-Net counterparts with a view to contacting the trader in the country in question on behalf of the consumer).

Top five countries UK consumers complained about most (where traders originated from) - in 2013

1. Spain
2. Germany
3. Ireland
4. France
5. Luxembourg

Top five countries where complaints about UK traders most regularly came from - in 2013

1. Germany
2. France
3. Ireland
4. Netherlands
5. Denmark

To see which countries most complaints have arisen from and about in the seven years since the UK ECC started, check out the UK ECC's 'Celebrating 10 years with ECC-Net' factsheet.