Bid to align rules on sales promotions

Date: 18/06/1998

By Peter Chapman

EU MEMBER states are on course to tackle barriers to a single market in sales promotion across the Union before the end of the year.

A new group of member state marketing experts agreed at their first meeting in Brussels late last month to analyse the scope for mutual recognition of sales promotion rules.

Issues to be tackled include rules on pricing, such as those governing special offers, and regulations covering the content of promotional messages on advertisements and packaging.

"The expert group will be analysing where the existing laws on sales promotion are and where member states are willing to apply mutual recognition. That is the question we are posing," said one EU single market expert. "An opinion on that will be prepared towards the end of the year."

Different restrictions apply to sales promotion across the EU, forcing firms selling in more than one member state to use different campaigns.

Stephan Loerke, EU affairs consultant at the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), said fast-moving consumer goods often had to be totally repackaged in order to comply with the different rules.

"In effect, sales promotion rules are a major barrier to the single market," he said. "The WFA would welcome a mutual recognition regime where goods marketed legally in one member state would automatically be allowed in another. The question is how an opinion of the expert group would transform itself into actual action."

The next meeting of the expert group, a key part of the European Commission's strategy for tackling barriers to trade in the advertising and marketing sectors, is scheduled for October.

Sources say bilateral and informal contacts between member states will make up for the relative paucity of official meetings.

EU Member States are on course to tackle barriers to a single market in sales promotion across the EU before the end of 1998.