UNFAIR PRACTICES, GERMAN STYLE

Writing in The Lawyer magazine, 18 August, Taylor Wessing lawyers Kai Westerwelle and Timothy Pinto warn of an impending battle between Germany and the European Commission as to how the EU’s laws on unfair commercial practices should go. The Commission wants a harmonisation directive which will bring into line the widely differing standards by which trading practices are deemed unfair across the Community (the UK and Ireland for example have no unfair competition statute at all). But Germany ― already known as the most protectionist jurisdiction in Europe ― is set to go it alone without waiting for the proposed Directive to be adopted. The sort of practices the proposed Directive will address are, for example, aggressive and persistent marketing, the targeting of recently bereaved consumers and the use of ‘advertorials’ where it is not explained to the consumer that the apparently editorial comment has been paid for.



Arguments for and against advertorials here, here and here

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