What will change with the new consumer protection directive?
In December 2022, the legislative decree to implement the EU Omnibus Directive was approved. The objective of this directive is to better enforce and modernize the EU consumer protection rules. There are many innovations introduced by the new Legislative Decree: we will analyze only the main ones.
The Legislative Decree n. 26 intervenes on the Consumer Code indicating that each announcement of a price reduction must indicate the lowest price applied by the professional to the generality of consumers in the 30 days before the application of the reduction itself.
In the event that the price reduction is progressively increased during the same promotional campaign, as often happens during end-of-season sales, the law establishes that the price displayed in the first price reduction announcement is maintained as the previous reference price.
The new article 27, paragraph 9, of the Consumer Code raises the maximum statutory fine from 5,000,000.00 Euros to 10,000,000 Euros. The following conducts are identified by law as incorrect:
- the promotion of a good as identical to another sold in a different Member State which however has significantly different composition or characteristics;
- provide online search results without clearly displaying paid advertisements that help better categorize products;
- indicate that the reviews of a product are attributable to consumers who have purchased the good without, however, having taken reasonable measures to verify the authenticity of the reviews themselves;
- submit, or instruct another person to submit, fake reviews to promote certain products.
The additional obligations introduced for contracts concluded via the Internet, for example in terms of parameters used to determine the outcome of online searches carried out by the consumer.