Brussels, 24/02/2016 (Agence Europe) - In the view of UEAPME, the association which represents European small and medium-sized enterprises, there is no need to legislate again to fight geo-blocking. This was stated by Luc Hendrickx, at a public hearing on the single market strategy held at the European Parliament by the committee on the internal market and consumer protection (IMCO), on Tuesday 23 February.
“Online traders must have freedom of contract as all traders do”, he explained. He argues that there are many reasons for a cross-border sale to be blocked, and not necessarily of a legal nature. It could be that compliance costs are too high, there may be copyright issues, or it could simply be because the business model is no longer viable.
“The European Commission must legislate where legislation is needed, rather than to please any particular player”, he told EUROPE, referring quite openly to the European Consumer Organisation (BEUC). In his view, the Commission's proposal (see EUROPE 11417 and EUROPE 11419) suffers from problems of both form and substance. Regarding the form, he points out that the Commission did not carry out a prior impact assessment before announcing the legislative project. However, an impact assessment is to be published in the next few days, a European source close to the dossier told us.
As for the substance, a provision of this kind would hammer SMEs which use the Internet in order to communicate about these products, but which aim to develop their markets only at local level, with unjustified administrative and economic constraints. UEAPME finds that legislating against geo-blocking would infringe the principle of the freedom of contracts for traders.
BEUC disagrees with this position, feeling that the strategy presented by the Commission takes little account of consumers. For instance, according to Ursula Pachl, deputy director general of BEUC, only one out of the 22 initiatives aims to tighten up consumers' rights and this is precisely the one regarding geo-blocking. She argues that there is a need to legislate against geo-blocking, which continues to be a discriminatory practice. She therefore proposes a number of measures under the future legislative proposal to be presented by the Commission in May: a “blacklist” of unjustified practices, obliging companies to provide reasons for a refusal, obliging the national authorities to monitor discriminatory practices of businesses, ensuring that a proper system of sanctions is set in place and guaranteeing proper application of the legislation.
Geo-blocking hit the headlines in July of last year, with a scandal featuring the theme park Disneyland Paris, which operates different pricing on the basis of nationality. The Commission immediately called upon the French government to open an investigation (see EUROPE 11369). (Original version in French by Pascal Hansens)