4.2.1. Online platforms and their commercial practices

Online platforms generally provide infrastructure and enable interactions between suppliers and users for the provision of goods, services, digital content and information online. Online platforms’ business models range from merely allowing users to look for information supplied by third parties to directly enabling contractual transactions between third party traders and consumers. Platforms can also advertise and sell, in their own name, different kinds of products. The UCPD applies to the commercial practices of the platform and of the traders using the platform to promote their products to the consumers. Given that the UCPD only applies in B2C situations, the first step in assessing its application to an online platform provider should be to evaluate whether it qualifies as a ‘trader’ or ‘acting in the name of or on behalf of a trader’ under Article 2(b) UCPD. According to a case-by-case assessment, a platform provider may be acting for purposes relating to its business whenever, for example, it charges a commission on the transactions between suppliers and users, provides additional paid services or draws revenues from targeted advertising. The second step in assessing whether the UCPD is applicable should be to evaluate whether the platform provider engages in ‘business-to-consumer commercial practices’ within the meaning of Article 2(d), towards users (suppliers and recipients) who qualify as ‘consumers’ within the meaning of Article 2(a) UCPD. A platform qualifying as a trader must always comply with EU consumer law as far as its own commercial practices are concerned, regardless of the fact that these practices may concern products supplied by third parties and not the platforms themselves. This is possible due to the very broad definition of ‘commercial practice’ in Article 3(1) UCPD as a ‘practice directly connected with the promotion, sale or supply of a product to consumers’, without setting additional requirements as to the origin of the product. In Verband Sozialer Wettbewerb case the Court confirmed this large scope of ‘commercial practice’ in a case concerning advertising by an online platform in a printed medium: Lastly, it must be stated that the obligation to include in an invitation to purchase [products] the information referred to in Article 7(4)(b) of Directive 2005/29 does not depend on the issue of whether the supplier of the products concerned is the author of that invitation [i.e. the online platform] or a third party. Consequently, where an advertisement [by an online platform] in a print medium promotes products from different suppliers, the information required by that provision remains necessary, subject to the limitations of space mentioned in paragraph 29 above.’ (339)

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Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-25 · Text as adopted (Official Journal); later amendments are not incorporated in this text.