§3.1 Products which cannot legally be sold – No 9

Point No 9 of Annex I ‘Stating or otherwise creating the impression that a product can legally be sold when it cannot.’ This practice has been banned to prevent situations where a trader markets a product or a service and omits to clearly inform the consumer that there are legal rules which may restrict the sale, possession or use of a given product. This involves products or services for which the sale is banned or illegal in all circumstances, such as the sale of illegal drugs or stolen goods. Since such practices often involve criminal activities and/or dishonest operators, they are easy to identify. Such practices are usually also serious violations of other laws that usually are more specific and which take precedence over the UCPD. A second category of practices concerns products or services which are not illegal but which may be legally marketed and sold only under certain conditions and/or subject to certain restrictions. For example: — Travel packages can only be organised by traders that comply with the insolvency protection requirements imposed by the Package Travel Directive (234). A national court found that a travel agency offering such packages despite having failed to lodge a guarantee deposit with a national insolvency fund, had infringed point No 9 of Annex I in that consumers were given the false impression that the offer was in full compliance with the law (235). — Giving the impression that tickets may legally be sold where there is a national legislative prohibition in either the EEA state of sale, the EEA state of performance or both is considered an unfair commercial practice, according to the judgment of the EFTA Court in a case concerning a trader’s marketing and resale of tickets to the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games (236).

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