INTRODUCTION
Directive 98/6/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council (1) (‘PID’) aims to enable consumers to easily evaluate and compare the price of products on the basis of homogenous and transparent information. Thus, consumers are able to make better informed choices (2). The PID requires traders to indicate in an ‘unambiguous, easily identifiable and clearly legible’ manner the selling price and the price per unit of measurement (i.e. the price per kilo, litre, or any different single unit of quantity widely and customarily used in the Member State concerned). Directive (EU) 2019/2161 of the European Parliament and of the Council (3) amended the PID adding specific rules – Article 6a – on price reduction announcements. Directive (EU) 2019/2161 will become applicable across the EU from 28 May 2022. The new Article 6a of the PID addresses the issue of transparency of price reductions (4) by introducing specific rules to ensure that they are genuine. Article 6a aims at preventing traders from artificially inflating the reference price and/or misleading consumers about the amount of the discount. It increases transparency and ensures that consumers actually pay less for the goods when a price reduction is announced. The new provision on price reductions also enables the enforcement and market surveillance authorities to control more easily the fairness of price reductions, as it set clear rules on the reference ‘prior’ price on which the announced reduction must be based. The purpose of this Notice is to provide guidance on how these new provisions on the announcements of price reductions should be interpreted and applied. To ensure legal certainty and facilitate enforcement, this Notice highlights issues that are common to all Member States, including the interplay between the PID and other EU legislation. The Notice does not analyse the application of the Directive in the individual Member States, including the decisions of national courts and other competent bodies. In addition to different information sources available in the Member States, information on the national provisions transposing the PID, on case law and on legal literature is available in the Consumer Law Database accessible via the E-justice portal (5). Where not specified otherwise, articles referred to in this Notice are those of the PID, as subsequently and most recently amended by Directive (EU) 2019/2161. Where quotations from the text of the Directive contain visual highlighting, such emphasis has been added by the Commission. This Notice is addressed to the EU Member States and to Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway as signatories of the Agreement on the European Economic Area (6) (EEA). References to the EU, the Union or the Single Market should therefore be understood as references to the EEA or to the EEA market. This Notice is intended purely as a guidance document – only the text of the Union legislation itself has legal force. Any authoritative reading of the law has to be derived from the text of the Directive and directly from the decisions of the Court of Justice of the European Union (hereinafter: ‘CJEU’ or ‘the Court’). This Notice takes into account rulings of the Court published until October 2021 and cannot prejudge further developments of the Court’s case law. The views expressed in this Notice cannot prejudge the position that the European Commission might take before the Court. The information contained in this Notice is of a general nature and does not specifically address any particular individuals or entities. Neither the European Commission nor any person acting on behalf of the European Commission is responsible for any use that may be made of the following information. As this Notice reflects the state of the art at the time of drafting, the guidance offered may be modified at a later date.
Source: EUR-Lex (Cellar) · retrieved 2026-09-07