Professional diligence
Furthermore, under Article 5(2) UCPD, no platform qualifying as a trader should act contrary to the requirements of professional diligence in its commercial practices towards consumers. Under Article 2(h) UCPD, ‘professional diligence’ means the standard of special skill and care which a trader may reasonably be expected to exercise towards consumers, commensurate with honest market practice and/or the general principle of good faith in the trader’s field of activity. The professional diligence duties of these traders vis-à-vis consumers under the UCPD is different from, whilst complementary to, the regime on exemptions from liability established under Article 14 of the e-Commerce Directive for illegal information hosted by service providers at the request of third parties. Furthermore, Article 15(1) of the e-Commerce Directive prevents Member States from imposing on such hosting service providers a general obligation to monitor the stored information or to actively engage in fact-finding. In this respect, Article 1(3) of the e-Commerce Directive makes it clear that the e-Commerce Directive ‘complements Community law applicable to information society services without prejudice to the level of protection for, in particular, public health and consumer interests, as established by Community acts and national legislation implementing them in so far as this does not restrict the freedom to provide information society services’. This means that the e-Commerce Directive and relevant EU consumer acquis apply in principle in a complementary manner (341). As a result of their professional diligence obligations under the UCPD, platforms should take appropriate measures which – without amounting to a general obligation to monitor or carry out fact-finding – enable relevant third party traders to comply with EU consumer and marketing law requirements. For example, such measures could imply that platforms design their interfaces in a way that enables third party traders to present information to platform users in compliance with EU marketing and consumer law – especially information required by Article 7(4) UCPD in the case of invitations to purchase and Article 6 of the CRD. For example, online marketplaces must enable the third party suppliers to inform consumers about their identity, contact details, the price of the product and any additional costs that the consumer may face such as via in-app purchases. If online platforms falling within the scope of the UCPD fail to comply with such professional diligence requirements or otherwise promote, sell or supply a product to users in an unfair manner, they can be found in breach of EU consumer law. They cannot invoke the intermediary liability exemption under the e-Commerce Directive as far as their own commercial practices are concerned as that exemption relates only to illegal information stored at the request of third parties.
Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-25 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.