Implementation of Directive 2005/29/EC Concerning Unfair Business-to-Consumer Commercial Practices in the Internal Market

Directive 2005/29/EC aimed at approximating the laws of the Member States on unfair commercial practices, including unfair advertising, which directly harm consumers’ economic interests. Romania's accession to the European Union on January 1, 2007 imposed the necessity to implement this directive in the national law. If implementation in the other EU countries has raised a number of difficulties in correlating internal regulations, in the case of Romania, a country where market economy mechanisms were still in progress, the implementation was achieved directly by taking over ad litteram the majority of the provisions contained in the Community regulation. We have shown in the present study that this is a constant practice of the Romanian legislator and we have tried to identify the advantages and disadvantages of this law making process. Moreover, even this servile takeover of the text of the Directive into the domestic law was not without inaccuracies, which were corrected by subsequent regulations. We have also tried to identify the novelty elements brought by the national legislator as well as the manner in which this regulation fits into the Romanian consumer protection system.