EU – Baltic States, Internet, Legislation, Markets and Companies, Technology
International Internet Magazine. Baltic States news & analytics
Thursday, 28.03.2024, 19:33
EU Parliament passes rules to make online shopping easier
The new
regulation will allow consumers to freely choose the website for buying goods
or services. Consumers may no longer be blocked or re-routed to a local website.
Under the new rules, online retailers in Europe will
have to treat customers from another EU country in the same way as local
customers. This means, they have to offer these customers the same prices or
sales conditions when they buy goods, or when they purchase services not
protected by copyright or services that are supplied in the premises of the
retailer or in a physical location where the retailer operates.
Online retailers will also have to ensure same prices
and terms for those clients who receive electronic services that are not
protected by copyrights, like cloud computing, data storage and other services.
Geo-blocking in Europe doesn’t apply to all products
and services that are being sold online though. For example, digital copyright
content, such as e-books or a Spotify or Netflix subscription won’t be covered by these new
rules, at least, for now. There is a review clause in the law, which means the
European Commission must evaluated within two years whether the geo-blocking
ban should also include such content.
The decision to end geo-blocking has yet to be
approved by the European Council. The new regulation will take effect nine
months after their publication in the Official Journal of the European Union.