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§4.3 Contracts concluded by telephone

COMMISSION NOTICE Guidance on the interpretation and application of Directive 2011/83/EU of the European Parliament and of the Council on consumer rights · European Union

Article 8 5. Without prejudice to paragraph 4, if the trader makes a telephone call to the consumer with a view to concluding a distance contract, he shall, at the beginning of the conversation with the consumer, disclose his identity and, where applicable, the identity of the person on whose behalf he makes that call, and the commercial purpose of the call. Article 8(5) contains a special rule for contracts concluded by telephone requiring that the trader’s identity and the commercial purpose of the call are made clear at the beginning of the conversation. Since this rule is ‘without prejudice to paragraph 4’, traders may limit the information provided during the telephone call in accordance with Article 8(4). Article 8 6. Where a distance contract is to be concluded by telephone, Member States may provide that the trader has to confirm the offer to the consumer who is bound only once he has signed the offer or has sent his written consent. Member States may also provide that such confirmations have to be made on a durable medium. Article 8(6) contains another regulatory choice available to Member States. Some Member States have used this regulatory choice in a more limited way, i.e., they applied the respective additional requirements only to contracts concluded by telephone call initiated by the trader. ‘Durable medium’ in this provision refers to paper and other durable media as explained in Recital 23: ‘Durable media should enable the consumer to store the information for as long as it is necessary for him to protect his interests stemming from his relationship with the trader. Such media should include in particular paper, USB sticks, CD-ROMs, DVDs, memory cards or the hard disks of computers as well as e-mails.’ Therefore, Member States may require that both the trader’s confirmation of the offer and the consumer’s consent be on a durable medium, which is not necessarily on paper and may be, for example, in an email exchange.

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07