Misleading marketing practices

EESC opinion: 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:

For more information please contact the INT Section Secretariat