EU Omnibus Directive
What is the EU Omnibus Directive?
The EU Omnibus Directive is the rule that a shop announcing a price reduction must show, as the previous price, the lowest price it charged for that product in the last 30 days. In Bulgaria the rule sits in the Consumer Protection Act and applies to every struck-through price in an online shop. The same directive makes a shop state whether it verifies reviews, and mark paid placements in search results.
Example
A chair sells at €120 for two months. On 1 June its regular price becomes €96 and stays there for three weeks. On 20 June the shop wants a campaign reading 40 per cent off €120, which would be €72.
The rule does not allow €120 as the starting point. The lowest price of the last 30 days is €96, and that is the previous price to show: €96 down to €72 is 25 per cent. The discount in money is the same — €24 — but the announced percentage is different, and so is the number that gets struck through.
Where the reduction moves in steps within one uninterrupted campaign — €96, then €84, then €72 — the same previous price may stand for the whole campaign.
Why it matters for a business
The rule reaches every screen that carries a struck-through price: the product page, category listings, the basket, emails and ads. To keep to it, a shop has to store price history per item and be able to produce the lowest price of the last 30 days, rather than rely on someone’s memory.
The directive goes further than price. A shop has to say whether it checks that reviews come from real buyers, and how; it has to explain how its own search results are ranked, and mark the placements that were paid for.
In practice this is data work, not copywriting: a price-history field, an automatic calculation, and one source feeding every channel. We build those rules into the online shop so they are not maintained by hand before each campaign.
What to ask
- Does the shop keep price history, and how far back?
- Is the 30-day lowest price calculated automatically, including for each variant of a product?
- How does the previous price appear in listings, in the basket and in the product feed, not only on the product page?
- How are individual discounts and codes handled, which are not an announced reduction?
- Who owns the verified-review label, and how is the purchase checked?