The sale-teaches-the-agent problem is already handed to agents by law inside the EU. Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive requires any announcement of a price reduction to state the prior price, defined as the lowest price the trader applied in the 30 days before. The Court of Justice confirmed the strict reading on 26 September 2024. So an EU agent does not have to reconstruct price history. The merchant publishes the 30-day floor next to the discount. I run a six-person finishing contractor in Lithuania and we quote rather than list, but anyone with a public price list is already exposing the pattern.
Thanks for highlighting Marius. I was not aware. However, this does not seem to be consistently applied in the EU, as I've seen instances of major merchants not being that transparent.
EU has traditionally placed consumer protection pretty high in its priorities. I'd love to understand whether the obligation created by this article actually translates into the price history being machine readable. Again thanks for highlighting!
The inconsistency has a structural cause. Article 6a sits in Directive 98/6/EC, not a regulation, so each member state transposes and enforces it separately, and the Commission’s December 2021 notice (2021/C 526/02) is interpretive guidance rather than binding law. On format: the duty is drafted as disclosure to the consumer. I found no machine-readability requirement in the text or the notice, so an agent reads the 30-day floor off the page the way a shopper does. The Aldi Sud ruling, C-330/23, settled the calculation, not the plumbing.
The sale-teaches-the-agent problem is already handed to agents by law inside the EU. Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive requires any announcement of a price reduction to state the prior price, defined as the lowest price the trader applied in the 30 days before. The Court of Justice confirmed the strict reading on 26 September 2024. So an EU agent does not have to reconstruct price history. The merchant publishes the 30-day floor next to the discount. I run a six-person finishing contractor in Lithuania and we quote rather than list, but anyone with a public price list is already exposing the pattern.
Thanks for highlighting Marius. I was not aware. However, this does not seem to be consistently applied in the EU, as I've seen instances of major merchants not being that transparent.
EU has traditionally placed consumer protection pretty high in its priorities. I'd love to understand whether the obligation created by this article actually translates into the price history being machine readable. Again thanks for highlighting!
The inconsistency has a structural cause. Article 6a sits in Directive 98/6/EC, not a regulation, so each member state transposes and enforces it separately, and the Commission’s December 2021 notice (2021/C 526/02) is interpretive guidance rather than binding law. On format: the duty is drafted as disclosure to the consumer. I found no machine-readability requirement in the text or the notice, so an agent reads the 30-day floor off the page the way a shopper does. The Aldi Sud ruling, C-330/23, settled the calculation, not the plumbing.