WINE LABELLING 175 products, which has considerable implications and impacts on the health of customers. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that information on food and beverages has specific regulations. 2. GENERAL RULES ON FOOD LABELLING IN THE EU EU legislation has always paid particular attention to the issue of customer information, an approach apparent, for example, in some decisions of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) regarding the application of article 34 TFEU, which stipulates that “quantitative restrictions on imports and all measures having equivalent effect shall be prohibited between Member States”. Since free trade and the lifting of trade barriers constitute one of the pillars of the European single market, the ECJ has adopted a particular information paradigm approach, in which strict rules regarding certain foods and/or food labelling may be substituted by providing more information to customers16. In other words, equivalent measures in the form of obligatory standards are generally discouraged, whereas a more efficient approach would involve informing customers about the different characteristics of products17. The ECJ also elaborated a specific notion of the customer as “reasonably circumspect”18: when presented with a specific marketing or advertising information, if the average customer is not confused when exercising common sense, then any (slightly) misleading information is not unlawful per se. Essentially, if the customer has a right to be informed, then it is also his or her duty to protect himself or herself19, be justly circumspect and examine all available information with due diligence. Nonetheless, such a principle must be put in context: the specific type of good or service must be taken into consideration since it may have an impact on the level of attention required from a consumer20, and stricter rules apply when a consumer may be misled on something that could pose a risk to his or her health21. The more important is that the ECJ is well aware that including all ingredients in labels is not in itself a solution as long as consumers may be misled by 16 See ECJ C120/78 (Cassis de Dijon), ECJ C193/80, ECJ C 261/81, ECJ C 178/84 and ECJ C 407/85. 17 J. U. FRANCK & K. PURNHAGEN, Homo Oeconomicus, Behavioral Sciences and Economic Regulation: On the Concept of Man in Internal Market Regulation and its Normative Basis, in Law and Economics in Europe: Foundations and Applications, ed. by K. Mathis, Berlin, 2013. 18 ECJ C 470/93 (Mars). 19 R. SCHULZE, H. SCHULTE-NÖLKE & J. JONES, A Casebook on European Consumer Law, Oxford, 2002. 20 ECJ C 342/97. 21 ECJ C 200/98.
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