EU Retailers Beware: Article 5 Disclosure Mistakes That Trigger 4% Turnover Fines (2026 Update)

Introduction

Have you ever wondered whether the law says anything about what you have to tell a customer standing at your counter, as opposed to one clicking through your website? It does, and the regime is one of the most under-respected and under-audited parts of the entire EU consumer framework. Article 5 of the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU sets the pre-contractual information requirements for on-premises contracts, meaning everything you sell from a physical shop, a market stall, a trade fair stand, a salon, a workshop, or a showroom. Getting it wrong exposes you to national penalties, and where the failure amounts to a widespread infringement enforced under the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation 2017/2394.

Article 5 of the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU is the lighter cousin of Article 6, which governs distance and off-premises contracts and demands considerably more disclosure. Different rules, different forms, different liabilities, and merchants running both online and offline channels routinely apply the wrong checklist to the wrong sale. That single mistake costs in two directions, because you over-disclose where you need not and under-disclose where you must. This article sets out what Article 5 requires today, where the regime exempts you, and what changes on 27 September 2026 under Directive (EU) 2024/825 on empowering consumers for the green transition, together with Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1960 which fixes the design of the new notice and label.

What Article 5 Requires Today

Before the consumer is bound by the contract, you must provide the following information in a clear and comprehensible manner, and only to the extent that it is not already apparent from the context:

1. The main characteristics of the goods or services, to the extent appropriate to the medium and to the goods or services. A smartphone warrants more specification than a head of lettuce, and a bespoke sofa more than a chocolate bar. This provision does not demand a technical datasheet beside every banana, but it does demand enough for an informed choice.
2. Your identity as trader, such as your trading name, the geographical address at which you are established, and your telephone number. Fixed retailers usually satisfy this without thinking, because it sits on the shopfront and the receipt. Market traders, pop-up vendors, and mobile service businesses are where audits find the gaps.
3. The total price inclusive of taxes, or, where the price cannot reasonably be calculated in advance, the manner in which it is to be calculated, together with all additional freight, delivery, or postal charges, or at least a statement that such charges may be payable where they cannot reasonably be calculated in advance. A consumer-facing price tag without VAT is also a misleading omission under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive 2005/29/EC.
4. Where applicable, the arrangements for payment, delivery, and performance, the time by which you undertake to deliver the goods or perform the services, and your complaint handling policy. The qualifier matters. Delivery time is meaningless for a coffee sold over the counter, but all four elements must be clear before a consumer commits to a custom furniture order.
5. A reminder of the legal guarantee of conformity for goods, meaning the minimum two-year statutory liability under the Sale of Goods Directive 2019/771, plus, where applicable, the existence and conditions of after-sales services and commercial guarantees.
6. The duration of the contract where applicable, or, where the contract is of indeterminate duration or is to be extended automatically, the conditions for terminating it. This catches gym memberships, subscription boxes sold in store, and service maintenance plans.
7. Where applicable, the functionality, including applicable technical protection measures, of goods with digital elements, digital content, and digital services. Note that the Modernisation Directive 2019/2161 widened this beyond digital content, so it reaches connected appliances as well as boxed software.
8. Where applicable, any relevant compatibility and interoperability of goods with digital elements, digital content, and digital services that you are aware of or can reasonably be expected to have been aware of.

One trap deserves separate mention. If you offer a commercial guarantee, that triggers a distinct set of obligations under Article 17 of the Sale of Goods Directive. The guarantee statement must be provided on a durable medium at the latest at the time of delivery, expressed in plain and intelligible language, and contain the mandatory content listed there, beginning with a clear statement that the consumer’s legal guarantee rights against the seller are unaffected and free of charge. Many retailers issue guarantee certificates that do not meet Article 17, and that is a regulatory finding waiting to happen. Note also that non-compliance does not release the guarantor, because the guarantee remains binding regardless.

The Day-to-Day Exemption: Read It Carefully

Article 5(3) provides that Member States are not required to apply these disclosure duties to contracts which involve day-to-day transactions and which are performed immediately at the time of their conclusion. A coffee bought and drunk, a loaf of bread, a bus ticket scanned and used. The exemption is real, and retailers rightly welcome it.

The catch is that it is optional for Member States rather than automatic across the EU. Whether your quick sale is exempt therefore depends on the national transposition in the country where you trade, so if you franchise or operate cross-border you cannot assume the same treatment everywhere. Map this jurisdiction by jurisdiction before you rely on it to skip your in-store disclosure framework. And do not confuse Article 5(3) with Article 3(4), which is a separate scope-level option allowing Member States to disapply the Directive to off-premises contracts where the payment by the consumer does not exceed 50 euros. Different regime, different sales channel, and we see the two conflated constantly.

What Changes on 27 of September 2026

Directive (EU) 2024/825 amends both the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive and the Consumer Rights Directive. Member States had to transpose it by 27 March 2026 and must apply the measures from 27 September 2026. For shopfloors, the changes land squarely in the Article 5 list. From that date, your in-store disclosures expand in the following ways.

Your existing reminder of the legal guarantee of conformity under point (e) must be given in a prominent manner using a harmonised notice, and a parallel reminder for digital content and digital services is added by the new point (eb). The harmonised notice is a standardised, EU-wide reminder of the consumer’s rights under the legal guarantee, its minimum two-year duration, and where to find country-specific detail. Its design and content are fixed by Implementing Regulation (EU) 2025/1960, which applies from the same date, and it must be displayed at the point of sale, for instance on a poster by the checkout, and online as a general reminder. This will be the single most physically visible change in compliant shops.

Under the new point (ea), where the producer offers the consumer a commercial guarantee of durability at no additional cost, covering the entire good and lasting more than two years, and makes that information available to you, you must disclose that the good benefits from that guarantee, its duration, and a reminder of the legal guarantee, in a prominent manner using the harmonised label whose design is likewise fixed by the Implementing Regulation. You are not obliged to chase the producer for this. The duty is triggered only once the producer puts the information in your hands.

Under the new point (ed), for goods with digital elements, digital content, and digital services, where the producer or provider makes the information available to you, you must disclose the minimum period during which software updates will be provided, expressed either as a period of time or by reference to a date. This concerns the duration of update support, not merely whether updates exist, so a phone retailer must carry the supported update window in its point-of-sale information rather than leave it in a manufacturer PDF.

Finally, reparability becomes a two-limb obligation. Under the new point (i), where a reparability score applies to the goods, that score must be provided before the consumer is bound. This limb already has real content, since the ecodesign and energy labelling rules for smartphones and tablets have applied a repairability score since 20 June 2025. Under the new point (j), where point (i) does not apply and provided the producer makes the information available to you, you must instead supply information about the availability, estimated cost, and ordering procedure for spare parts necessary to keep the goods in conformity, the availability of repair and maintenance instructions, and any repair restrictions. In practice one limb or the other will usually apply, and even where neither does, the general prohibition on misleading omissions under the Unfair Commercial Practices Directive continues to apply to reparability claims.

The Penalty Regime: Why This Matters Now

Retailers consistently underestimate the enforcement side. The Modernisation Directive 2019/2161, applicable since 28 May 2022, replaced Article 24 of the Consumer Rights Directive. National penalties for infringements must be effective, proportionate, and dissuasive, and for widespread infringements and widespread infringements with a Union dimension enforced under the Consumer Protection Cooperation Regulation, Member States must provide for fines whose maximum amount is at least 4 per cent of the trader’s annual turnover in the Member States concerned, or at least 2 million euros where turnover information is not available. National regulators have been using these powers since 2022, and pre-contract disclosure failures are attractive to inspectors precisely because they can be verified in a single in-store visit. The September 2026 changes come with a fixed application date and legally prescribed formats, which makes non-compliance unusually easy to spot.

Conclusion

In summary, a defensible retail setup looks like this: point-of-sale disclosure calibrated by product category so that complex goods receive richer information and simple commodity sales stay efficient, receipt and invoice templates capturing trader identity, the total price including tax, and the legal guarantee reminder by default, commercial guarantee statements drafted to satisfy Article 17 of the Sale of Goods Directive on a durable medium and in plain language, a complaint handling policy visible at the till, a jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction map of where the day-to-day exemption actually applies, and a delivery plan for the September 2026 additions covering the harmonised notice, the harmonised label where producers supply durability guarantee information, minimum software update periods, and reparability scores or the alternative repair information. If you are not certain your in-store disclosures, guarantee statements, or point-of-sale processes would survive a real audit, book a call with our team or another qualified professional for personal guidance and concrete legal advice.

Reflecting on this regime, pre-contract disclosure looks like fine print but functions as one of the highest-leverage compliance fixes a retailer can make, because it is low effort once established and it neutralises an entire category of regulatory exposure. Article 5 applies to every on-premises sale you make, the day-to-day exemption is a national option rather than an EU-wide right, and from 27 September 2026 the list grows to include durability, update, and repair information in prescribed formats. Retailers who thrive under this framework treat point-of-sale disclosure as part of the customer experience rather than as overhead, and they fix it before the inspector arrives rather than after.