On 16 December 2008 the Lithuanian Parliament adopted a Law Amending and Supplementing Article 6.188 of the Civil Code of Lithuania. The amendment to the Code is aimed at properly harmonising Lithuanian legislation on unfair terms in consumer contracts with the requirements set in Council Directive 93/13/EEC (“the Directive”), as the EC Commission decided that the existing Civil Code provisions were not comprehensive.

      

      The amendment to the Code establishes an exemption from the requirement laid down in Article 5 of the Directive according to which any written term of a consumer contract must be drafted in plain, intelligible language and where doubt exists about the meaning of a term, the interpretation most favourable to the consumer prevails. The requirement to interpret contractual terms in favour of the consumer will not apply in protection of the public interest of consumers where prohibition of the use of standard contractual terms is sought. In individual cases, the emphasis is on protecting the individual consumer against risks entailed by unclear terms, whereas in case of protecting the public interest of consumers the aim is to generally delete an unclear term from the contract.