The Consumer and Competition Division of the Ministry for Competitiveness and Communications launched a consultation process on the transposition of Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market (the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive).

The directive aims at fully harmonising the EU requirements relating to business-to-consumer commercial practices, thus providing a high level of consumer protection. The directive provides a general prohibition on unfair commercial practices, which will replace divergent Community rules and simplify the legislative framework in the EU.

It deals with two key types of unfair commercial practices: those which are misleading, and those which are aggressive. If a practice is “misleading” or “aggressive”, then it is automatically deemed unfair. The annex to the directive further provides a blacklist of unfair commercial practices which are to be deemed to be unfair and banned in all member states of the EU.

Since the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive was intended as a “framework directive”, paving the way for other possible future legal instruments, the transposition exercise had to be extensive, affecting a number of local laws. The current consultation is seeking submissions from interested parties on the current drafts as proposed. Submissions are to be made in written or electronic form by Wednesday 30 May and are to be addressed to: Dr Theresienne Bezzina, Consumer and Competition Division, Office for Fair Trading, Cannon Road, Sta Venera or email:

[email protected].

Copies of the proposed draft legislation can be obtained from Dr Bezzina on tel.: 2144-6250-5, email: [email protected] or from www.mcmp.gov.mt/consultations.asp.