On 26 September, the Commission issued a set of guidelines on the application of EU food and consumer laws to dual quality products, as announced by President Juncker in this year's State of the Union speech.

The guidelines will help national authorities to determine whether a company is breaking EU laws when selling products of dual quality in different countries.

European Commission - Press release
Dual quality food products: Commission guides Member States to better tackle unfair practices

Brussels, 26 September 2017

Today the Commission issued a set of guidelines on the application of EU food and consumer laws to dual quality products, as announced by President Juncker in this year's State of the Union speech.

The guidelines will help national authorities to determine whether a company is breaking EU laws when selling products of dual quality in different countries.

The guidance lists and explains the relevant requirements from EU food laws and EU consumer laws to which authorities need to refer when analysing a potential dual quality product issue:

• the Food Information Regulation which requires that consumers are given truthful and sufficient information about a particular food product. For example, food labels must list of all of the ingredients contained in a product.
• the Unfair Commercial Practices directive, which prohibits unfair commercial practices, such as marketing identically branded products in a way that has the potential to mislead consumers.

Based on this legislation, the guidance establishes a step-by-step approach for the national consumer and food authorities to identify whether the producers are in breach of these laws. In case there is a cross-border aspect to a breach, the consumer authorities can address it through the Consumer Protection Cooperation network at the European level.
The national consumer and food authorities are responsible for ensuring that companies comply with EU laws. However, the European Commission is committed to helping them through this guidance and through different work strands.

Read the press release.