§2.2 Indication of the ‘prior price’ in case of general price reduction announcements

Article 6a does not prevent traders from announcing price reductions in a general manner, for example: — ‘20 % off on everything today’ or — ‘20 % off on all Christmas decorations this week’. Where the price reduction (as described in section 1.1) is announced by a general statement, e.g. a physical banner or online communication, the ‘prior’ price does not have to be indicated on the same medium as the price reduction announcement itself. Instead, the ‘prior’ price for the individual goods covered by the announcement must be indicated at the point of sale, i.e. on the respective price tags in shops or price sections in online shop interfaces. A trader may also announce a general price reduction providing different discounts for different categories of goods. In these cases, the trader must clearly identify the categories of goods concerned and their respective price reduction, for example: — ‘30 % off on goods with a blue dot and 40 % off on goods with red dot’. Regarding the indication of the ‘prior’ price for the individual goods covered by the general price reduction announcement, two cases must be distinguished: — where in the past 30 days, the trader has not increased the price of the individual goods covered by the general announcements and has not organised other (general) price reductions during that period. In this case, the ‘prior’ price for the purposes of Article 6a will be the previously applied selling price of the goods, i.e. the price already indicated on the price tag or in the price section of the online shop interface. Accordingly, the trader will not need to change the price tags/online information for the goods concerned due to the application of Article 6a of the PID. — where the trader has increased the price or has organised another (general) price reduction in the last 30 days, the selling price on the tag or online will not qualify as ‘prior’ price as it will not be the lowest price in the past 30 days as required by Article 6a. The trader will therefore have to adjust the relevant price tags or online price indication of the goods covered by the general price reduction announcement in order to indicate the correct ‘prior’ price for those goods. Article 6a of the PID does not prevent group advertising of price reductions where central entities, such as franchisors, plan and advertise price reduction campaigns on behalf of the sellers (retailers) that distribute their products. Where such central entity announces price reductions on behalf of its members, it has to make sure that the participating retailers are in a position to comply with the requirements regarding price reductions, e.g. they must enable the participating retailers to respect the rules on indicating the ‘prior’ price. Each participating retailer remains responsible, also in this case, for ensuring that the relevant goods that it sells in the context of the price reduction campaign have the correct ‘prior’ price. As explained above, where the participating retailer has kept its prices stable during the past 30 days before the announcement of the reduction, no adjustment of the individual ‘prior’ prices will be needed as the previous selling price will constitute the ‘prior’ price for the purposes of Article 6a. Should it not be the case for certain goods covered by the general campaign, the seller must adjust the ‘prior’ price for the goods concerned. This includes cases where price reduction campaigns launched by the respective seller (retailer) for its own goods are followed within less than 30 days by campaigns launched by the central entity. In such cases, for determining the ‘prior’ price, the individual retailed concerned must take into account the reduced price in the previous campaign(s).

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