Directive (EU) 2019/2161 amends Directive 2005/29/EC on Unfair Commercial Practices (UCPD) and introduces a new Article 11a granting affected consumers the remedies of damages, price reduction and termination of the contract. The regulation of these remedies is deferred to the Member States, which must comply with the principles of equivalence and effectiveness of European law. The harmonisation of the remedies granted to consumers may have substantial effects for national laws due to the peculiarities of the UCPD. In particular, the use of the legal standard of the "average consumer" as a benchmark for unfairness of a commercial practice. Unlike traditional private law, the UCPD uses an abstract criterion to determine a breach. The importance of the reform can be seen by linking the characteristics of the UCPD with the objective notion of consumer from European law, which ignores the personal circumstances of the parties. All of this sets the limits that the legislators of the Member States must respect when transposing Directive (EU) 2019/2161 into national law. It also serves a parameter to assess the transposition of the Directive into Spanish law, a task that the Royal Decree-law 24/2021 undertook.
