the premises—such as exclusions of liability for food-borne illness, allergic reactions, or theft of personal belongings7. Under the directive, any term which creates a significant imbalance in the parties’ rights and obligations, to the detriment of the consumer and contrary to the requirement of good faith, may be considered unfair and thus non-binding. Clauses attempting to exclude liability for harm caused by the restaurant’s own negligence or breaches of health and safety obligations are likely to fall within this category. Importantly, the consumer does not need to have explicitly accepted such terms for the directive to apply; the mere unilateral imposition by the trader is sufficient to trigger scrutiny under EU law8. In addition, the Price Indication Directive (Directive 98/6/EC9) requires that traders clearly and unambiguously indicate the selling price of products offered to consumers. Although originally designed for retail sales, the directive’s principles apply, by analogy, to restaurant services. This implies that prices for food and beverages must be transparently communicated—typically through menus and price lists—including all applicable taxes and any mandatory surcharges, such as service fees or cover charges10. Ensuring that menus and price lists are transparent and unambiguous is a legal duty; hidden charges or surprising fees (sometimes known as “junk fees”) would not only contravene the spirit of price transparency law but constitute a misleading commercial practices under the UCPD11. The Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has consistently affirmed the obligation to include all unavoidable and foreseeable costs in the advertised price, most notably in the travel and transport sectors. Although these rulings concerned other domains, their reasoning has clear implications for the restaurant context, particularly where consumers are presented with incomplete or non-transparent pricing at the point of decision-making12. 7 Smekal, H., Hoppe, A., Hübner, M., Hosnedlová, P., & Taimr, A., Flexible Implementation and the Consumer Rights Directive, RSC Working Paper 2022/24, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies Integrating Diversity in the European Union (InDivEU), p. 14-15. 8 https://www.matheson.com/insights/detail/cjeu’s-preliminary-ruling-on-exemption-under-unfair-terms-directive (access: 1.05.2025). 9 Directive 98/6/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 16 February 1998 on consumer protection in the indication of the prices of products offered to consumers (http://data.europa.eu/eli/dir/1998/6/2022-05-28). 10 Art. 1 of 98/6/EC: The purpose of this Directive is to stipulate indication of the selling price and the price per unit of measurement of products offered by traders to consumers in order to improve consumer information and to facilitate comparison of prices. 11 Narciso, M. (, The unreliability of online review mechanisms. Journal of Consumer Policy, vol. 45, p. 349-351. 12 https://www.crowell.com/en/insights/client-alerts/eu-court-finds-that-food-label-may-be-misleading-even-if-listof-ingredients-is-not#:~:text=On%204%20June%202015%2C%20the,S, (access: 1.05.2025). 544 KAROLINA PRUCHNIEWICZ
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