Adverts using green slogans

Fortunately, there are more and more eco-responsible consumers in Hungary but some of the producers recognised this tendency as an additional opportunity to advertise their products. The problem is that many advertising labels appear as „environment-friendly”, „eco”, „green” and „bio”, which don’t fulfil the requirements to qualify for green products. However, preserving the rightfulness of „green” qualification is essential since abuse of „green label” can do a lot of harm to genuine environment-friendly products. HuMuSz – and personally György Kalas LLD – has long been trying to expose misleading adverts and getting legal satisfaction. Thanks to him, the Hungarian Competition Authority and the Advertising Standards Authority regularly receives complaints against companies. Indeed, we also won several cases against large multinational companies that paid millions of forints to the Republic of Hungary by right of fines imposed on them because of violating law. Although the cases we have won so far give us a sense of moral victory, we still feel that we have a Sisyphean task because of the insufficient legal regulations. For example, before the „environment-friendly labelling” act of the Ministry of Environmental Protection has come into force in 1998, it was up to the producers to use this label. Since 1996, there has been an act in Hungary prohibiting unfair market behaviour but we still have a lot to do in this aspect. Recently, we don’t refrain from applying for legal procedures to protect consumers from dishonest measures aiming to influence them. Some of the cases we won, some of them we lost – but we never give up.