By adopting such a provision, the European Union seeks a full transparency when it comes to price reductions in order to ensure their authenticity. The new legal provision aims to prevent business owners from artificially increasing the reference price and/or misleading consumers about the amount of the reduction.

This 2019 European Directive was transposed into Belgian law by the law of 8 May 2022, published in the Belgian Official Journal on 2 June 2022. 

The new provision only concerns price reduction adverts (and not price reductions which are not advertized and which can therefore be applied without respecting the new legal provision) and can be summarised as follows: the price applied before the application of the reduction must always be indicated; this previous price advertized must always be the lowest price that has been applied over the last 30 days preceding the entry into force of the reduction; a price reduction may not last longer than one month while maintaining the same reference price.

With our best regards.

The Cairn Legal team