EuroCommerce calls on European Parliament to boost online cross-border commerce. To boost the lacklustre performance of cross border e-commerce in the European Union, it is crucial to reduce the legal fragmentation which makes it currently complicated for online traders to sell to customers abroad.
Ahead of the release of its major policy guidance later this week, EuroCommerce calls on the European Parliament to vote in favour of the Common European Sales Law (CESL) on Wednesday as proposed by the European Commission and reject any amendment which puts the full harmonisation approach at risk.
EuroCommerce is particularly worried about the idea of transforming the Common European Sales Law into a directive with minimum harmonisation for some contractual provisions, as voted for by the Parliament’s IMCO Committee last year. “This endangers the objective of fighting legal fragmentation,” warns Christian Verschueren, Director-General of EuroCommerce.
”E-commerce has a huge potential to reshape the European Single Market, by enabling price and product-related comparisons in a borderless market environment. The European Parliament has, on Wednesday, a clear chance to prove whether it is serious about creating such a borderless market environment to the benefit of traders and consumers, or that we will simply continue to muddle through.”
EuroCommerce has always supported a balanced full harmonisation of consumer rights and, therefore, regrets the reduced scope of the application of the Consumer Rights Directive, as adopted in 2011. The proposed CESL Regulation tries to fill the gaps left by the aforementioned directive. CESL concerns a common regime for business and consumers which provides the equivalent of full harmonisation on an optional basis. EuroCommerce calls on MEPs to approve this approach on Wednesday, so the Council can continue to work on it to ensure it is fully satisfactory to both co-legislators.
