(20 January 2022) – Today, the European Commission and national consumer protection authorities released the results of an EU-wide website screening (“sweep”) on online consumer reviews.
Under the coordination of the Commission, authorities of 26 Member States, Iceland and Norway checked 223 major websites for misleading consumer reviews.
Almost two thirds of the online shops, marketplaces, booking websites, search engines and comparison service sites analysed, triggered doubts about the reliability of the reviews.
In 144 out of the 223 websites checked, authorities could not confirm that these traders were doing enough to ensure that reviews are authentic, i. e. that they were posted by consumers that actually used the product or service that they reviewed.