SUPREME ADMINISTRATIVE COURT OT LITHUANIA: ADVERTISING BY UAB MEDIASHOP MISLED CONSUMERS

On February 28 the Supreme Administrative Court of Lithuania (Court) upheld the Competition Council’s decision of 10 December 2015 whereby UAB Mediashop (Company) was fined EUR 2 244 for misleading advertising.

The Council found that on the website www.elektromarkt.lt the Company disseminated false claims about the discounts for LG TVs. It turned out that the discounts for TVs were artificially increased and calculated on the basis of the outdated prices.

The Court upheld the Council’s decision and confirmed that the Company did disseminate misleading information about the benefits to consumers. UAB Mediashop asked the Court to reduce the imposed fine. The Court said that although the Company did not create obstacles for the Council to conduct an investigation and provided all necessary information, it shall not be considered a mitigating circumstance.

We are happy with the court decision that has once again confirmed – advertisements have to be accurate. For the past few years we have been putting a considerable amount of efforts to ensure that consumers are  not misled by the advertisements containing information about fake and artificially increased discounts. To encourage companies provide accurate and useful information about the discounts, last year we prepared the Recommendations on price comparison in advertising. Hopefully, these recommendations will help companies avoid misleading advertising.

–Elonas Šatas, Deputy Chairman of the Competition Council

The ruling of the Court is final and not subject to appeal.

In 2010–2016 the Council adopted 56 decisions on the infringements of the Law on Advertising: 24 of them were appealed to courts, only one of them was repealed.