For the purposes of this Directive:
‘consumer’ means any natural person who, in commercial practices covered by this Directive, is acting for purposes which are outside his trade, business, craft or profession;
‘trader’ means any natural or legal person who, in commercial practices covered by this Directive, is acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession and anyone acting in the name of or on behalf of a trader;
‘product’ means any good or service including immovable property, digital service and digital content, as well as rights and obligations;
‘goods’ means goods as defined in Article 2, point (5), of Directive (EU) 2019/771 of the European Parliament and of the Council 1;
‘business-to-consumer commercial practices’ (hereinafter also referred to as commercial practices) means any act, omission, course of conduct or representation, commercial communication including advertising and marketing, by a trader, directly connected with the promotion, sale or supply of a product to consumers;
‘to materially distort the economic behaviour of consumers’ means using a commercial practice to appreciably impair the consumer's ability to make an informed decision, thereby causing the consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise;
‘code of conduct’ means an agreement or set of rules not imposed by law, regulation or administrative provision of a Member State which defines the behaviour of traders who undertake to be bound by the code in relation to one or more particular commercial practices or business sectors;
‘code owner’ means any entity, including a trader or group of traders, which is responsible for the formulation and revision of a code of conduct and/or for monitoring compliance with the code by those who have undertaken to be bound by it;
‘professional diligence’ means the standard of special skill and care which a trader may reasonably be expected to exercise towards consumers, commensurate with honest market practice and/or the general principle of good faith in the trader's field of activity;
‘invitation to purchase’ means a commercial communication which indicates characteristics of the product and the price in a way appropriate to the means of the commercial communication used and thereby enables the consumer to make a purchase;
‘undue influence’ means exploiting a position of power in relation to the consumer so as to apply pressure, even without using or threatening to use physical force, in a way which significantly limits the consumer's ability to make an informed decision;
‘transactional decision’ means any decision taken by a consumer concerning whether, how and on what terms to purchase, make payment in whole or in part for, retain or dispose of a product or to exercise a contractual right in relation to the product, whether the consumer decides to act or to refrain from acting;
‘regulated profession’ means a professional activity or a group of professional activities, access to which or the pursuit of which, or one of the modes of pursuing which, is conditional, directly or indirectly, upon possession of specific professional qualifications, pursuant to laws, regulations or administrative provisions;
‘ranking’ means the relative prominence given to products, as presented, organised or communicated by the trader, irrespective of the technological means used for such presentation, organisation or communication;
‘online marketplace’ means a service using software, including a website, part of a website or an application, operated by or on behalf of a trader which allows consumers to conclude distance contracts with other traders or consumers;
‘environmental claim’ means any message or representation which is not mandatory under Union or national law, in any form, including text, pictorial, graphic or symbolic representation, such as labels, brand names, company names or product names, in the context of a commercial communication, and which states or implies that a product, product category, brand or trader has a positive or zero impact on the environment or is less damaging to the environment than other products, product categories, brands or traders, or has improved its impact over time;
‘generic environmental claim’ means any environmental claim made in written or oral form, including through audiovisual media, that is not included on a sustainability label and where the specification of the claim is not provided in clear and prominent terms on the same medium;
‘sustainability label’ means any voluntary trust mark, quality mark or equivalent, either public or private, that aims to set apart and promote a product, a process or a business by reference to its environmental or social characteristics, or both, and excludes any mandatory label required under Union or national law;
‘certification scheme’ means a third-party verification scheme that certifies that a product, process or business complies with certain requirements, that allows for the use of a corresponding sustainability label, and the terms of which, including its requirements, are publicly available and meet the following criteria:
the scheme is open under transparent, fair, and non-discriminatory terms to all traders willing and able to comply with the scheme’s requirements;
the scheme’s requirements are developed by the scheme owner in consultation with relevant experts and stakeholders;
the scheme sets out procedures for dealing with non-compliance with the scheme’s requirements and provides for the withdrawal or suspension of the use of the sustainability label by the trader in case of non-compliance with the scheme’s requirements; and
the monitoring of a trader’s compliance with the scheme’s requirements is subject to an objective procedure and is carried out by a third party whose competence and independence from both the scheme owner and the trader are based on international, Union or national standards and procedures;
‘recognised excellent environmental performance’ means environmental performance compliant with Regulation (EC) No 66/2010 of the European Parliament and of the Council 2 or with national or regional EN ISO 14024 type I ecolabelling schemes officially recognised in the Member States, or top environmental performance in accordance with other applicable Union law;
‘durability’ means durability as defined in Article 2, point (13), of Directive (EU) 2019/771;
‘software update’ means an update that is necessary to keep goods with digital elements, digital content and digital services in conformity in accordance with Directive (EU) 2019/770 of the European Parliament and of the Council 3 and Directive (EU) 2019/771, including a security update, or a functionality update;
‘consumable’ means any component of a good that is used up recurrently and that needs to be replaced or replenished for the good to function as intended;
‘functionality’ means functionality as defined in Article 2, point (9), of Directive (EU) 2019/771.