The European Commission will launch an inquiry into ecommerce to ensure that practices aren’t stifling cross-border trade and a single EU digital market, according to a report on the lawyer.com.
The inquiry will cover manufacturers and retailers, online content service providers and online platforms such as marketplaces and price comparison websites.
According to the report from Eversheds: “On 6 May the European Commission (“the Commission”) announced the launch of a competition law inquiry into the e-commerce sector, where it is believed that companies who engage in selling via the internet may be employing methods to restrict online trade with the aim, in particular, of territorial fragmentation and restriction of price competition.”
The aim seems to be to ensure that cross-border trade (CBT) within the EU isn’t being hampered and citizens in certain countries aren’t disadvantaged.
In the report, one comment leapt out regarding languages: “One issue the Commission will consider is cross-border availability of digital content, such as multiple language options on websites.”
This raises the question as to whether the EU might be considering rules requiring ecommerce websites to enable CBT with language considerations. We know how they think already: the so-called #vatmoss regs have been a real problem for sellers of digital goods within the EU.
The good news is that the sluggish pace of EU bureaucracy means that the report won’t be published until some point in 2017 and the implementation of any recommendations will take much longer. Tamebay will keep you posted.
7 Responses
Perhaps the EU pen pushers should step in and sort out the postal services in EU countries as that has to be one of our biggest barriers.
Sending to Italy is a joke and sending to Spain is pretty hit and miss too.
The US have USPS serving all states, in the EU we have various national postal operators, some government run and some private, but the inconsistency of service is damaging to cross boarder trade in my opinion.
I would not really want to see an EU postal service (EUPS) as it would probably push up prices, but i think they need to do something about countries with poor postal services before they worry about translating everying. It is all well and good having a website in mulitple languages but delivery of the goods is all the customer wants in the end.
Citizens in some EU countries are dissadvantaged because their postal system is terrible, it is easier to count the number of sellers who do ship to Italy than it is count the ones that have Italy on the blocked list.
I have seen many examples of products being far more expensive on Amazon Italy and this has to be partly due to the cost of reliable delivery, Amazon also charge much more for FBA in Italy than they do in the UK for example.
The sooner we pull out of Europe the happier I will be. Nothing but pointless meddling and bureaucracy.
Perhaps the EU might discover services such as Google Translate which works well enough for everyone else?