Government Decree No. 1/2024 (I. 9.) on the measures necessary to reduce the inflationary effect on food products was recently published, according to which, if the size of a new unit pack of a given product is smaller than that of the product manufactured by the same manufacturer in the period between 1 January 2020 and 1 July 2023, the trading company with a turnover of more than HUF 1 billion are required to display a notice on the product concerned for 2 months of the date on which they start selling the product. The Decree entered into force on 1 February 2024.
The trading company is not obliged to display the notice when the manufacturer introduces a new, smaller unit pack – in terms of weight or volume – but the previous unit pack is not phased out for the next 6 months, and the trading company continues to sell the previous unit pack as well.
To enable the trading companies to comply with their obligation to display the notice, if the product is manufactured in Hungary, it is the manufacturer, or, in other cases, the first distributor in Hungary and the wholesaler, who must provide the trading companies with appropriate information on the product affected by the reduction in unit pack sizes.
In case of failure to comply, the Consumer Protection Authority may impose an administrative fine of HUF 1,000,000 per product.
Consumers can also get information on the products affected by the reduction in unit pack sizes from the information database publicly available on the website of the National Food Chain Safety Authority (NÉBIH).