European Commission to crack down on e-commerce scams

The Commission is aimed at promoting further coordinated enforcement action, producing guidance and helping EU members share best practices following a review of the existing Unfair Commercial Practices Directive.

The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive has introduced a standardised set of rules across the EU, including a general prohibition on unfair business-to-consumer (B2C) commercial practices. Among its provisions are bans on misleading consumers by making fraudulent claims about products and on aggressive marketing practices such as fake free offers, hidden advertising, direct marketing to children and baiting consumers with attractive offers that the trader is unable to supply in quantities based on the scale of the advertising.

In its first report on how the Directive was working in practice (31-page / 213KB PDF), five years after the rules were originally implemented by member states, the European Commission has mentioned that consumers and traders were still uncertain about how the rules would be applied by national enforcement bodies. In addition, member states had raised concerns over lack of resources and effective sanctions.

According to statistics from the European Commission, only 40 percent of European consumers currently shop online across EU borders. Consumers were particularly losing out in the travel and transport, digital, financial services and property markets. However, the Commission has stated that consumers were now more interested in making cross-border purchases and were willing to spend more money than they were in 2006, before the Directive came into force.

The Commission also plans to strengthen the efficiency of the European consumer protection network and ensure that more coordinated cross-border enforcement actions, or sweeps, are carried out. It will produce guidance aimed at helping member states to apply the existing law, and develop enforcement indicators so that it can detect failings in the system that require further investigative or corrective action.