Article 3: The Three-Level Structure Of The UCPD)

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Article 3 specifies the scope of UCPD, including factual regulatory remit and a list of areas which fall outside its application.
According to Article 3(1), the UCPD ‘shall apply to unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices before, during and after a commercial transaction in relation to a product’.
Business-to-consumer commercial practices, as defined in Article 2(d), refer to ‘any act, omission, course of conduct or representation, commercial communication including advertising and marketing, by a trader, directly connected with the promotion, sale or supply of a product to consumers’. In addition, UCPD goes far beyond the contractual relationship between trader and consumer with the aim of comprehensively protecting consumer from …show more content…

The general clause under Article 5 of UCPD, which is considered as the key element of the UCPD, prohibits unfair commercial practices and lays down criteria for judging whether a commercial practice is unfair.
The second level contains particular types of unfair commercial practices, which fall into two main categories: misleading (including either actions or omissions) and aggressive practices.
The third level provides a list of typical misleading and aggressive commercial practices which shall be considered as unfair per se without judgment (the ‘blacklist’). The practice not concretely stated in the blacklist might also be unfair depending on the assessment under the general clause as well as the provisions on misleading and aggressive practices. It is worth stressing that this blacklist is an undivided part of the UCPD, hence, the EC must follow a legislative procedure for revising EC Directive in order to amend the list. The complication in procedure might be to diminish the modification of the Directive because it will lead to the legal uncertainty in contrast with the Directive’s …show more content…

The UCPD impact on private law
Article 3(2) states that UCPD is ‘without prejudice to contract law and, in particular, to the rules on the validity, formation or effect of a contract’, which means it is not obliged Member States to modify national contract law to be in accordance with UCPD. In other words, if a consumer terminates a contract on the ground that he has been deceived by an unfair commercial practice which is prohibited under the UCPD, there would be no remedy provided by UCPD for invalidating the contract .
Nevertheless, it does not preclude the possibility of UCPD’s indirect consequences for national contract rules. The UCPD does not constrain any Member States from adopting general contract law remedies for consumer in respect of contract obtained by deception. Furthermore, it is believed that the UCPD would have impact on contractual practice since traders must manage their interaction with consumers as the results of this Directive due to the fact that the UCPD applies to unfair commercial practices ‘before, during and after a commercial transaction’. Additionally, to ensure the full comparability, the UCPD requires Member States to inspect their national rules that fall within the remit of UCPD. Prior to the 2014 Regulations of the UK, the consumer rights to redress has also been implemented in some countries on the basis of unfairness concept as clarified in the UCPD

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