Misleading marketing practices

Key points:

The EESC:

• supports the Commission's view that stricter regulation is required to effectively ban, and enforce exemplary and dissuasive sanctions against, certain aggressive directory company sales practices;
• believes that a framework regulation should be adopted, possibly developed through delegated acts, in order to ensure more uniform and effective enforcement across the Member States;
• warns of the need to give attention to the trans-European nature of many of these practices, which requires coordinated international action;
• believes that the best way to achieve coherent and consistent rules prohibiting misleading marketing practices would be a joint review of Directive 2006/114/EC and Directive 2005/29/EC to address B2B and B2C relations at the same time, preserving the specificities of each within a common framework;
• urges the Commission to develop and enforce complementary measures to improve information and dissemination; cooperation between administrative authorities, public-private platforms and stakeholder representative organisations; and rapid reaction mechanisms in order to put a stop to these practices and ensure damage compensation.

Other relevant EESC opinions:

• Misleading and comparative advertising (CESE 1352/2006, INT/321)
•  Unfair Commercial Practices (CESE 105/2004, INT/201)

For more information please contact the INT Section Secretariat