ECJ condemns Belgian ban on joint offers

Joint offers – a sales technique through which the acquisition of a product, service or benefit is made dependent to the purchase of another product or service - is, in most cases, prohibited by Belgian law [1].

This general prohibition on combined offers has been strongly criticised due to its alleged violation of the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive [2]. Following its judgement of 23 April 2009, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) finally confirmed that the Belgian universal prohibition on joint offers was in fact contrary to European regulation.

Whilst waiting for the necessary modifications to be made to the legislation, Belgian judges should disregard the general prohibition on joint offers. Combined offers of products and services can therefore be considered as authorised in principle. A judge can only ban this sales technique in case of unfair commercial practices specific to the offer, for example, if a joint offer is aggressive or misleading.