Consumer protection: unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices. 'Unfair Commercial Practices Directive'

The European Parliament adopted the report by Mercedes BRESSO(PES, IT) modifying the Council's common position. (Please refer to the summary dated 02/02/2005).

The report as adopted contains 19 amendments to the draft directive. To avoid going to conciliation, MEPs compromised on some of their initial proposals (68 in number) and withdrew others. The Council, which had already agreed to a majority of Parliament's 58 first reading amendments, made it clear that it would not accept some of the MEPs' resubmitted proposals. In particular, with regard to the 'common market' clause, the Council refused to reintroduce (as in the Commission's initial proposal and as favoured by certain MEPs) the 'country of origin' principle (under which the law of the Member State where the trader is established is applicable). This point serves to link this directive on unfair commercial practices to the services directive (now being debated by Parliament) and the text regulating sales promotions (currently blocked in Council over the 'country of origin' principle).