Does the Omnibus 30-day rule apply to flash sales?

Short answer: yes. A flash sale — a short, time-limited discount — is still an announcement of a price reduction, so the Omnibus 30-day lowest-prior-price rule applies just as it does to any other sale. The brevity of the offer does not exempt it. Under Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive, as amended by the Omnibus Directive (2019/2161, applying from 28 May 2022), whenever you announce a price reduction you must indicate the prior price, defined as the lowest price you applied during at least the 30 days before the reduction. Nothing in the rule turns on how long the reduced price lasts. A two-hour flash sale, a 24-hour deal, and a two-week promotion are treated the same way for the purpose of the reference price. What this means in practice The struck-through "was" price in your flash sale must be the genuine lowest price you charged in the preceding 30 days — not an inflated figure introduced just before the event, and not the recommended retail price dressed up as your own prior price. If you show "−40% for 3 hours only", that 40% must be calculated against the real 30-day low. Do not raise the price shortly before the flash sale to make the discount look bigger — the reference is the lowest price in the last 30 days, so the bump is ignored (or worse, exposes the display as misleading).Keep a price history. If challenged, you must be able to evidence that the reference price was genuinely the lowest applied over the 30-day window.Percentage and "save €X" wording count too, not just was/now displays — the same 30-day basis applies to how the reduction is expressed.Back-to-back flash sales are a red flag. If a product is almost always "on flash sale", the reference price you keep striking through may not reflect a genuine higher prior price, which regulators can treat as misleading. A quick worked example A gadget sold at €50 for the last 30 days. You run a 4-hour flash sale at €35 and advertise "was €50, now €35". This is fine: €50 was genuinely the lowest price in the prior 30 days. But if the gadget had actually been €40 for most of that month and you quietly lifted it to €50 the day before, the prior price is €40 — and advertising "was €50" during the flash sale would be non-compliant. For the full mechanics, see our Omnibus overview and complete Omnibus guide. The rule is about honesty of the reference price, and a flash sale is no exception. This answer is provided for educational purposes only and does not constitute legal advice. National implementations and derogations vary and change over time; consult a qualified lawyer in the relevant jurisdiction before making compliance decisions for your business.

Which Country's Rules Apply When I Sell Across the EU?

The short answer: EU-wide regulations give you a single baseline that applies everywhere, but a number of national obligations follow the country you are selling into. When you ship across the EU, you meet the EU rules once, then add the destination country's specifics for each market you serve. EU-wide regulations are the baseline Regulations such as the GPSR (product safety), the Omnibus rules (price transparency and reviews), the PPWR (packaging) and the European Accessibility Act apply across all 27 member states. Their core requirements - a safe product, a responsible person in the EU, honest price reductions, accessible e-commerce - do not change from one country to the next. Get these right and you have your common foundation for the whole single market. National transposition adds detail Where EU rules take the form of directives, each country writes them into national law and can add detail. Germany's price-display rules sit in the Preisangabenverordnung; Italy's consumer rules are in the Codice del Consumo; Spain uses the Texto Refundido consumer statute; France layers on strong consumer-protection practice. The substance is harmonised, but the exact wording, disclosures and enforcement bodies are national. Language follows the customer Consumer information must generally be in the language of the destination country: French for France (the Toubon law), Italian for Italy, Spanish (and sometimes co-official regional languages) for Spain, German for Germany. This covers product descriptions, safety warnings, instructions and the required pre-contractual information. A single English storefront is not enough for these markets. EPR is per destination country Extended Producer Responsibility registrations are national and depend on where your goods and packaging end up. If you ship to Germany, you register in the LUCID packaging register before selling. If you ship to France, you deal with the REP system and a unique identifier via ADEME, plus packaging EPR. Italy uses CONAI; Spain applies Royal Decree 1055/2022. You need the right EPR registration for each destination country you supply, not one blanket registration. In practice Meet the EU-wide regulations once as your baseline.For each destination country, add local language, transposition detail and EPR registration.Confirm specifics with the named national authority, as they change over time. See our country hubs for France, Italy, Spain and Germany for the destination-specific detail.

The Omnibus 30-day rule explained

The "30-day rule" is the best-known part of the Omnibus Directive. It governs how you must present the "before" price whenever you advertise a discount, and it has applied across the EU since 28 May 2022. What the rule actually says Under the amended Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive, any announcement of a price reduction must state the prior price. The prior price is defined as the lowest price the trader applied during at least the 30 days before the reduction. So the "was" figure in a "was / now" display is not the last price you charged, nor a recommended retail price — it is the lowest price that was actually in force at any point in the preceding 30 days. Worked example: a straightforward sale A pair of headphones sold at €80 continuously for the last two months. You launch a sale at €60. The lowest price in the previous 30 days was €80, so "was €80, now €60" is correct and compliant. Shoppers see a true saving from a price the product genuinely held. Worked example: a price that moved around Now imagine the same headphones were €70 for three weeks, then €80 for one week, and you advertise a sale at €65. The lowest price in the last 30 days was €70, so the prior price you must reference is €70, not €80. The compliant display is "was €70, now €65". Using €80 would overstate the saving and breach the rule. Worked example: the "inflate then discount" trap A classic non-compliant pattern: an item sits at €40 for weeks, you raise it to €60 for two days, then advertise "was €60, now €45". Because the lowest price in the last 30 days was €40, the honest reference is €40 — and €45 is higher than that. There is no genuine reduction, and presenting €60 as the "was" price is precisely the manipulation the rule was written to stop. Progressive discounts For discounts that deepen in stages during one campaign — say 10%, then 20%, then 30% off — the prior price stays fixed to the lowest price applied before the first reduction. You do not re-baseline at each stage. If the pre-sale lowest price was €100, every stage references €100, so the deepest stage shows "was €100, now €70", not "was €80, now €70". What this means in PrestaShop PrestaShop's default price display strikes through the base or list price, which may not equal the 30-day lowest. To comply, the "was" figure your theme renders needs to be driven by the lowest price genuinely applied in the previous 30 days — usually via a module or override that stores price history. Review your specific-price and catalogue-price rules so a struck-through figure is never a price shoppers were never charged. The full walkthrough is in the complete Omnibus guide, and the concept itself is defined in our reference-price FAQ. Educational content, not legal advice. Verify against the official text and your national implementing rules.

What is the 'prior price' or reference price?

Under the Omnibus Directive, the prior price (often called the reference price) is the figure a discount is measured against. It is defined as the lowest price the trader applied during at least the 30 days before the price reduction. This matters because the "was" figure in a "was / now" display must equal that 30-day lowest — not the most recent price, and not a manufacturer's recommended retail price. If your product was €90 then briefly €100 in the last month, the reference price for a new sale is €90, because that was the lowest price actually in force. For progressive discounts that deepen over a single campaign, the reference price is anchored once — to the lowest price before the first reduction — and does not reset at each stage. This stops each new markdown looking like a fresh saving from an already-reduced figure. Genuinely individual prices, such as an automatically applied members-only rate, are treated differently from general reductions announced to all shoppers, which are firmly within the rule. For the calculation with worked examples, see the 30-day rule explained; the short definition also lives in our Omnibus hub. Educational only, not legal advice. Verify against the official EUR-Lex text.

What does the Omnibus Directive say about fake reviews?

The Omnibus Directive tackles reviews in two ways: a transparency duty and an outright ban on fakery. The transparency duty If your shop displays consumer reviews, you must state whether and how you ensure that the published reviews come from consumers who actually bought or used the product. If you only publish reviews from verified purchasers, say so clearly. If you do not verify, you must not create the impression that the reviews are verified. The fake-review ban Certain practices are added to the blacklist of unfair commercial practices, meaning they are prohibited in all circumstances with no case-by-case assessment. These include submitting or commissioning fake reviews or endorsements, claiming reviews are from real users when steps to verify were not taken, and manipulating reviews — for example suppressing genuine negative ones — to promote a product. What to do in your shop Add a short statement near your reviews explaining how you verify authenticity.Prefer a review module that can restrict submissions to verified buyers.Never buy, write or commission reviews, and never hide genuine negative feedback. See the review section of the complete Omnibus guide for PrestaShop module notes. Educational only, not legal advice. Verify against the official text.

Guide

How to Display a Compliant Sale Price in PrestaShop

By Compliance Editorial Team Updated July 5, 2026 4 min read

Omnibus Directive

Running a sale should be simple, but the way you show the discount is now governed by law. Since the Omnibus Directive (EU) 2019/2161 became applicable on 28 May 2022, any shop that announces a price reduction has to be careful about which “before” price it displays. Get it wrong and a genuine bargain can look like a misleading claim. This guide walks through exactly how to display a compliant sale price in PrestaShop, with worked examples.

The rule in one sentence

The amended Article 6a of the Price Indication Directive (98/6/EC) says that when you announce a price reduction, the prior price you show must be the lowest price you applied during at least the 30 days before the reduction. That reference price is what gets struck through as the “was” figure. It is not the highest price you ever charged, and it is not a manufacturer’s suggested price.

A worked was/now example

Imagine a product with the following recent price history:

Days 1 to 20: sold at €100
Days 21 to 30: briefly dropped to €80 for a flash promotion
Day 31: you launch a new sale at €70

The lowest price in the 30 days before the new reduction was €80, not €100. So your compliant display is was €80, now €70. Advertising “was €100, now €70” would overstate the saving, because €100 was not the lowest price in the reference window. The honest headline discount is €10, not €30.

Why the reference price matters

The point of the rule is to stop the old trick of inflating a price for a short time and then “discounting” back to the normal selling price. By anchoring the “was” figure to the lowest recent price, the Directive makes the advertised saving reflect a real reduction rather than a manufactured one. Consumers can trust that a struck-through price is a price the product was genuinely sold at recently.

How this maps to PrestaShop

PrestaShop handles discounts mainly through Specific Prices and catalogue price rules, and it displays a former price (the struck-through figure) automatically. Understanding how these features interact is the key to staying compliant.

Specific Prices

On a product’s Pricing tab you can add a Specific Price that applies a reduction (a fixed amount or a percentage) for a chosen period, customer group, or currency. When a Specific Price is active, PrestaShop shows the reduced price and, by default, strikes through the product’s base retail price as the “regular” price. This is where you have to think: the base retail price PrestaShop strikes through is not necessarily the lowest price of the last 30 days.

Catalogue price rules

Catalogue price rules apply the same idea across many products at once, based on conditions such as category or currency. They are convenient for storewide events, but they carry the same risk: the crossed-out reference price is derived from the catalogue price, not from your actual 30-day low.

Keeping the former price honest

Track the real 30-day price history for each product before you launch a reduction, especially if you ran an earlier promotion in that window.
Set the base or reference price that PrestaShop strikes through to the lowest price actually applied in the preceding 30 days, not to a higher “normal” price.
If you ran back-to-back sales, remember that the second sale’s “was” price should reflect the first sale’s lower price if that was the 30-day low.
Review any module or theme that generates “save X%” badges, since these should be calculated from the same compliant reference price.

A second worked example

Suppose a product sat at €50 for the whole 30-day window with no promotions, and you now reduce it to €40. Here the lowest recent price genuinely was €50, so was €50, now €40 is correct and you can advertise a €10 saving with confidence. The rule is not a burden when your pricing has been stable; it only bites when a recent lower price would otherwise be hidden.

Common pitfalls

Using the manufacturer’s recommended retail price as the struck-through “was” figure. An RRP is not a price you charged, so it cannot be the prior price for a reduction announcement.
Forgetting a short flash sale inside the 30-day window, which quietly lowers the compliant reference price.
Letting a theme display the highest historical price as the “was” price out of habit.

For the wider picture, see our complete Omnibus guide and the background on the Omnibus Directive. If you are unsure how the RRP fits in, read how the 30-day rule works. You can also estimate exposure with our fine and penalty calculator.

This article is educational and does not constitute legal advice.