Νομική βιβλιογραφία

Misleading and Comparative Advertising Directive, link

The article points out that the provisions regarding misleading advertising are present in two different greek laws; law 146/1914 on unfair competition and law 2251/1994 on consumer protection. On the occasion of the completion of the centenary of the law 146/1914 and in view of the perspective of amendment of the Directive 2006/114, the article examines the need to amend also the law 146/1914 in relation to the problems caused by the dual regulation of the misleading and comparative advertising in greek legislation. The author argues that the fact that misleading commercial practices are regulated under law 2251/1994 at a B2C level, while misleading advertising is regulated under law 146/1914 at a B2B level, results in several problems such as a) confusion with respect to the scope of the aforementioned laws, as in most cases an act of competition affects not only the interests of the competitors, but also those of the consumers, b) difficulty in applying both general clauses on the meaning of “unfair”, c) confusion regarding the meaning of “misleading”, d) whether the criteria of evaluation of one law should apply on the provisions of the other law and to what extent is a Judge bound to apply them and e) whether the parallel application of both laws entails the invocation of the substantive provisions of law 2251/1994 by a competitor. In addition, as for comparative advertising, the author has the opinion that the provisions of Directive 2006/114/EC should have been implemented in law 146/1914 instead of that of 2251/1994, as this choice by the legislator caused nothing but confusion with regard to how these provisions should be interpreted. Thus, the author suggests that the only solution is an under community law interpretation so as to lift any conflicts between the two laws and safeguard the unity of the greek legal order.