The European Commission has answered the appeals made by the European Parliament and Council. On Tuesday 31 October, it amended its legislative proposal on online sales of goods, in view of including them in off-line and remote sales.
It should be recalled that the draft directive presented at the beginning of 2016 at the same time as a draft directive on digital content, proposed the clarification of several provisions in the 1999/44/EC directive on certain aspects of sales and guarantees for consumer goods, with a view to promoting cross-border e-commerce. It also seeks total harmonisation of the compliance criteria for goods, the hierarchy of remedies available to consumers, as well as the deadlines for overturning the burden of proof and legal guarantees.
Moreover, during their the proposal, both the Parliament and Council argued in favour of extending the scope of application to off-line sales contracts, in an attempt to avoid regulatory fragmentation. At the Council, the member states were, however, divided on how to proceed. Some of them wanted to withdraw the current proposal and replace it with a new one that would see another impact study undertaken.
Finally, this did not happen and the Commission restricted itself to a technical amendment of the legislative proposal, without changing the content. We were given an explanation that this will be based on the 2015 impact study, commissioned by the European Parliament (see EUROPE 11814) and the analysis of EU rules on consumer protection and marketing, headed by the Commission in May this year. The text of the revised proposal can be consulted at: http://ec.europa.eu/newsroom/just/item-detail.cfm?item_id=606582 (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)