Test-Achats

Ivo Mechels is the Executive Director at Test-Achats. Before this he worked for the Ministry of Defense and of Agriculture. He’ s also a guest lecturer at the University of Ghent and Odissee and an author. Ivo served as Treasurer to the Consumers International Board of Trustees from May 2019 until his resignation from the Board in May 2022.

Test-Achats was established in 1957 by a handful of volunteers on the model of UK and US comparative testing-based consumer organisations. It is one of the founding of Consumers International. Its main objectives are to inform, represent and defend consumers. The magazine 'Test Achats' started as a quarterly in 1959 but rapidly became a monthly publication. At the end of the 1980s, Test-Achats concluded a series of partnership agreements with consumer organisations from Spain (OCU), Italy (Altroconsumo) and Portugal (DECO) which eventually led to the creation of the Conseur Group in 1990. Today Conseur publishes over 20 different journals and has a combined readership of more than 1 million subscribers to its main magazines. Competition, food safety, the environment and the financial sector are other areas where Test-Achats has a long-track record of activities on behalf of Belgian and European consumers.