Taking the prohibition of unfair commercial practices seriously

Under the European Union Unfair Commercial Practices Directive, a commercial practice is misleading if it “‘is likely to deceive the average consumer or is likely to cause him to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise”’. Advertising statements constitute a major examples of commercial practices. In this contribution we analyze the issue as to how the misleading character of advertising statements should be assessed. We use the example of risky mortgage loan contracts to demonstrate how courts and consumers assess pre-contract statements.