The European Parliament today overwhelmingly adopted a report by MEP Simon Busuttil on combating business directory scams. The vote was adopted by 632 votes in favour and four against.

The report will prevent thousands of businesses from falling victim to scams based on misleading advertising whereby they unintentionally sign up to a listing in a business directory costing them up to €1,000 a year.

The report lists a set of concrete measures to achieve a number of objectives, namely raise awareness so that fewer businesses become victims; enable victims to resort to a clearly identifiable authority to make a complaint and seek a remedy; ensure that existing EU laws on misleading advertising scams are adequately enforced in EU countries; and tighten existing EU law to address such scams more directly.

It advises victims not to pay fees requested of them by misleading business directories until they have reported the matter to the authorities and sought advice on how to proceed.

The European Parliament received more than 400 petitions concerning this scam mainly from small businesses across the European Union. Most complaints singled out the directory known as “European City Guide” whereas some others complained about “Construct Data Verlag”, “Deutscher Adressdienst GmbH” and “Nova Channel”.