As trust in e-commerce flourishes, increasing numbers European consumers are shopping online, including in EU countries other than their own, but obstacles remain to the full realisation of the digital single market, in part because of differing national laws, according to the 2017 consumer markets scoreboard published by the European Commission on Tuesday 25 July.
“More than one European in two shops online. This figure has almost doubled in ten years. And almost six consumers in ten have trust in traders based in other EU countries. Unfortunately, consumers still face obstacles in online shopping such as refusal of payment or lack of delivery to their own countries” said European Justice and Consumers Commissioner Věra Jourová, presenting the scoreboard to the press.
Along with the scoreboard come the findings of the REFIT assessment of consumer legislation (six directives and one regulation).
The 2017 scoreboard, which is based on large-scale investigations, monitors national conditions for consumers in three areas: - knowledge and trust; - compliance and enforcement; - complaints and dispute resolution. It also examines progress in the integration of the EU retail market and in e-commerce.
The 2017 edition reveals that 55% of consumers shop online (compared with 29.7% in 2007). Of those interviewed, 13% reported a payment being refused and 10% were refused delivery of products to their country.
Retailers still wary of cross-border trade. Consumer trust may be growing but retailers remain wary. Only 40% of those currently selling online said that they are considering selling both domestically and across borders in the coming year, largely because of a higher risk of fraud, differences in national tax regulations or national contract law rules, or differences in consumer protection rules.
“Demand in online shopping is increasing but the offer is not yet catching up” said Jourová, determined now to make every effort to “make the digital market a reality”.
“Its costs a retailer €250,000 to adapt to the various legislation. That puts it out of the reach of SMEs”, the commissioner noted. The next step, then, will be to increase trader confidence through targeted harmonisation of the rules.
Jourová is looking to the Estonian Presidency of the Council of the EU and the European Parliament to finalise the work on two directives harmonising contractual rights in order to “release the potential of online shopping”.
Consumer conditions are generally better in the countries of the north and west of the EU than in those of the south and east. When a problem is encountered, 94.5% of Finns complain, whereas only 55.6% of Bulgarians do so. The risk of exposure to unfair commercial practices also varies greatly from one member state to another: 40.9% of Croatians say they have been affected by such practices, compared to 3.4% of Austrians.
According to the scoreboard, consumers are not always aware of their key rights (13% are fully aware) but there has been an improvement of 3.6 percentage points since the previous scoreboard in 2014.
Retailers’ knowledge of consumer rules has not improved since the previous edition of the scoreboard. Only 53.5 % of their answers to questions on basic consumer rights were correct. Again, the level of knowledge varies between countries, with only 36.2% of Croatian retailers knowing these rights compared to 62.3% of retailers in Germany.
“Consumers’ rights are very strong but we are not very well aware of them and the enforcement of these rights must be improved. ... I want to support and empower consumers to deal with the challenges in the 21st century both in the online and offline world. I am convinced that EU consumers deserve a new deal, one that would help to fill in the gaps of the current patchwork of 28 national systems, one that would empower consumers to be able to better protect themselves”, Jourová stated.
She also announced that she wanted to focus on effective recourse mechanisms and the introduction of class action that is lacking in Europe. “I will concentrate on these gaps to be filled between now and the end of my mandate”, she assured. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)