Unfair Commercial Practices Directive

On 18 June 2003, the European Commission published a proposal for a directive on unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices (the "Directive"). The aim of the Directive is to replace the various national provisions currently regulating business-to-consumer ("B2C") unfair commercial practices with common provisions at Community level.

Under the Directive a number of specified misleading and aggressive B2C commercial practices will be banned EU-wide. Furthermore, it sets out the criteria for assessing whether other types of commercial practices are unfair and as such would also be prohibited.

The Directive was published in the Official Journal on 11 June 2005.