Rechtsleer

Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, link

The Unfair Commercial Practices Directive provides for full harmonisation. As a result, Member States may not provide more protection to consumers than is offered by the Directive itself. It is generally rightly assumed that full harmonisation does not stand in the way of national self-regulation. After all, these are private agreements: there is no question of government legislation. At first sight, the Directive even gives free rein to self-regulation. This article shows, however, that the embedding of national self-regulation in legislation may nevertheless lead to a conflict with the prescribed full harmonisation. This is explained on the basis of the Dutch system of self-regulation of the Dutch Advertising Code. The solution, the author claims, is however simple: if media institutions were no longer required to join the Advertising Code and to no longer use commercials that have been found to be in conflict with the Advertising Code, the voluntary nature of the self-regulation is ensured, and no objection to the voluntarily accepted Advertising Code is no longer problematic from the point of view of full harmonisation.