Geographical
restrictions imposed by
online retailers on the shoppers are going to be eliminated by the
EU.
Meglena Kuneva, EU
consumer chief, gave a
speech in
London where she stated that she would propose new
legislation this autumn for creating an EU-wide set of rules governing
online and in-store
transactions. In order to simplify
shopping and
trading across borders and bring
down costs for shoppers the "single, simple set of core rights and obligations" should be introduced.
Recently a survey was conducted in 27 EU-countries and Norway. 26,000 consumers and 7200 businesses were polled. The results show that in 2008 33% of EU consumers purchased at least one item online as compared to 27% in 2006.
As for cross-border online trading activity its growth proved to be negligible. The cross-border online commerce increased only 1% from 2006. Thus, as of today it accounts only for 7%.
The survey shows that 37% of respondents are ready to purchase online from sellers located in their own country while at the same time 57% are even more eager to make purchases online from sellers in another EU country.
"Consumers and retailers are beginning to embrace e-commerce at national level but internal market barriers still persist online," says Kuneva in a statement. "The potential of the online internal market to deliver greater choice and lower price to consumers and new markets for retailers is considerable. We need to redouble our efforts to tackle the remaining borders."
