It has come as no surprise that the compromise negotiated with the Council of the European Union on ending unjustified geo-blocking for purchases on the Internet, was adopted by the European Parliament on Tuesday 6 February during its plenary session.
The new rules still need to be formally adopted by the Council and will enter into force nine months after their publication in the EU Official Journal.
In practice, the regulation makes it is compulsory for traders to make their goods and services accessible to all EU consumers, without discrimination in terms of access to prices, sales, or payment conditions. It prohibits any discrimination based on nationality, the place, residency or establishment of customers. The only derogations possible are those relating to objective reasons, such as VAT or certain legal provisions of public interest.
During the debate organised ahead of the vote, the political groups unanimously recognised the added value of these kinds of rules, in the knowledge that, as pointed out by Vice President Andrus Ansip, currently, 63% of websites do not allow consumers to purchase a product or service from another member state.
Nonetheless, several MEPs, including the rapporteur Roza Thun (EPP, Poland), regretted the fact that copyright protected non-audiovisual content had been excluded from the regulation's scope.
It should be recalled that the inter-institutional compromise of 20 November seeks to exclude this kind of service, as sought by the member states, whilst making it incumbent on the European Commission to examine whether to include this kind of content in the scope of the regulation (to satisfy Parliament) (see EUROPE 11909).
Backed by Dita Charanzova (ALDE, Czech Republic) for whom this is simply a “first step”, Roza Thun explained, “I'm not going to hide the fact that we wanted to include protected non-audiovisual content… but we were unable to overcome the Council's resistance”.
The European Commission provided assurances that it was taking this revision very much to heart. It also used this occasion to encourage the co-legislators to push forward negotiations on the other proposals on e-commerce, such as the provision of digital content, which is currently being discussed in the inter-institutional negotiations (see EUROPE 11953). (Original version in French by Sophie Petitjean)