Marketing and Advertising Law in a Process of Harmonization

The law on marketing and advertising has undergone profound changes based on the EU directives on unfair commercial practices and misleading and comparative advertising. The legislation partially requires full harmonization and contains a comprehensive blacklist of prohibited practices. However, in other areas only minimum harmonization is required. A comprehensive case law from the EUCJ has emerged but still many issues remain open, unclear and debated.

The EU Commission has an active interest in the field and has published numerous reports on the question. In addition it has developed revised, comprehensive guidelines on marketing business to consumer (B2C) which are fully discussed here. Further Commission initiatives in the area on business to business (B2B) marketing are also in the making, underlining the importance of this new collection

Academics within the fields of European law and media law.

Ulf Bernitz is a visiting professor at the Institute for European and Comparative Law, Oxford and a director of the Stockholm Institute of European Law.

Caroline Heide­Jörgensen is Professor of European Law at the University of Copenhagen