on small retailers will be avoided by
establishing a national value-added tax
threshold for exempting small businesses
from certain provisions. The proposed
regulation will not impose an obligation
to deliver across the EU.
The regulation is expected to take
effect in 2017, although some of its parts,
such as non-discrimination principles,
will apply later, as of July 1, 2018, giving
extra time to the service providers to
prepare for the changes.
of consumer rules
goods and digital content bought online
and involves creating EU contract rules
and consumer protection. These measures
are vital for increasing consumers' trust of
e-commerce.
Consumer protection enforcement
mechanisms will be improved by revising
the Consumer Protection Cooperation
(CPC) Regulation established in 2007.
This is an essential step to support national
consumer authorities addressing breaches
of consumer rules in more than one
country. National consumer authorities will
be better able to halt unlawful practices
and discover the identity of the responsible
trader, which is often hidden through a
complex online structure.
National enforcement authorities will
be provided, among others, with these
powers:
or social media accounts containing
scams;
registrars, internet service providers
and banks to track financial flows and
find out the identity of those behind
bad practices.
the collaboration of the enforcement
authorities in the EU member states in
order to coordinate a common position
addressing unlawful online practices and
implementing enforcement measures, if
necessary, to change the harmful practices
or compensate the affected consumers.
fragmentation of contract laws
area of consumer contract law is not
only detrimental to consumers' trust, but
also results in high costs for businesses
especially small and medium-sized
enterprises (SMEs) which must adjust
their practices to each particular market
in which they intend to operate.
The Commission has presented two
proposals for tackling the existing legal
fragmentation in the areas of online sales
of good and supply of digital content. The
key points for harmonizing and improving
consumer protection are:
the consumer will be able to ask
for a remedy without having to prove
that the defect existed at the time
of delivery throughout the two-year
guarantee period.
European rules businesses should
be able to sell goods and digital
content online based on the same key
contract rules for any EU country. In
this regard, the proposals related to
copyright and digital contract rules
are the first initiatives for exploiting
the full potential of the digital single
market.
divergences existing between the national
regulations and sometimes even the
absence of national rules related to
particular online commerce issues, this
harmonization at European level should
become a game-changing factor for
boosting e-commerce
parcel deliveries
European e-commerce is the high cost
of the cross-border parcel delivery.
By imposing more transparency on
actual cross-border delivery prices,
which nowadays do not always reflect
the underlying costs involved, the
Commission aims to encourage consumers
to be able to choose from a wider range of
products and e-retailers.
regulation for improving the cross-border
parcel delivery are the following:
delivery service providers.
border parcel delivery market.
applicable to delivery service providers
who meet the following criteria:
several member states.
distribution of parcels. Transport
alone, if not provided together with one
of these activities, is not considered to
be a parcel delivery service.
as set out in the Postal Services
Directive.
submit information regarding the prices of
certain services, the services offered and
conditions of sale, complaints procedures
and annual turnover to the National
Regulatory Authorities (NRAs).
Using the submitted information, the
NRAs will be responsible for collecting
the prices of certain services from
universal service providers and assessing
their affordability, encouraging price
transparency and competitiveness.
According to the Commission, at
this stage it doesn't intend to regulate or
establish a cap on delivery prices. After
taking stock of progress made in 2019, the
Commission will asses if further measures
are necessary.
The proposed initiatives are
interrelated and reinforce each other,
affording a more solid ground for the
development of the single digital market.
But we believe that these proposals will
need to be corrected and polished based
on the results of their implementation and
the obstacles they will most likely face.
Overall, the strategy for the European
single digital market is very ambitious,
but the potential profit is worth the effort,
since there is no doubt that e-commerce is
the future of the world's economy.