Amendment to Regulation on Commercial Advertisement and Unfair Commercial Practices (“Regulation”)

An amendment to the Regulation has been published in the Official Gazette of 31 August 2018.

The Amendment includes an additional sub-clause to the Appendix of the Regulation titled “Examples of Conduct Deemed As Unfair Commercial Practices” under “Section A – Deceptive Commercial Practices” which would have a significant impact on pricing policies of the companies as follows:

“Increasing the selling price of the products and services offered to the consumers without a just cause, acting as if it is affected due to circumstances such as input costs and increase in foreign exchange rates, while not affected in fact.”

Section A of the amended Appendix lists the examples of conduct which constitute unfair commercial practices by way of illustration without limitation. Accordingly, the additional provision is for the sake of giving an example of unfair practices only (without limiting others).

We consider that the aim of the amendment is protecting the consumers against the companies’ misuse of the increase in foreign exchange rates. On the other hand, it seems that the legislator has left a grey area to the interpretation of the jurisprudence as to what is a “just cause” and how the “effect” of exchange rates or input costs would be calculated or determined. Indeed this change will have a significant impact on pricing policies of companies.

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