E-Commerce Directive helping economy, says Commission

Internal Market Commissioner Frits Bolkestein said:

"The EU's Directive is helping e-commerce to take off in the Internal Market by ensuring that Europe's e-commerce entrepreneurs can take full advantage of a domestic market of more than 370 million consumers. Real on-line success stories are emerging. But things change rapidly in this sector, so we cannot sit back. We now need to make sure that the Directive continues to work well over the next few years, in an enlarged European Union."

The E-commerce Directive affects almost every EU business with a web site, not just sites that allow transactions. Its goal was to provide legal certainty for businesses and consumers.

To this end the Directive introduced into EU law a limited 'country of origin' principle, certain information requirements for web sites and electronic communications, and clarified the liability of intermediaries such as ISPs.

Due to be implemented by Member States by 17th January 2002, the Directive is now in force in 12 Member States, including the UK. The Commission said that the others – France, the Netherlands and Portugal – are in the advanced stages of implementation. Five of the ten future Member States have already written the Directive into national law.

The first report on the application of the Directive concludes that the internal market objectives of the Directive have been met and that it has provided a sound legal framework for information society services in the internal market.

The Commission says it has also led to modernisation of existing national legislation, for example in contract law, to ensure the full validity of on-line transactions.

The Commission now intends to focus on ensuring that the Directive is correctly applied within the Member States, and on collecting feedback and practical experience from business and consumers alike. These efforts will include continuous monitoring of the application of the Directive in current and future Member States.

In addition the Commission intends to use a notification procedure, whereby Member States have to give prior notification of any draft national regulations in relation to on-line services, to ensure that these rules do not conflict with the Directive.

In a separate report on the implementation of the EU Electronic Communications Regulatory Package, the Commission confirmed that the electronic communications market seemed to be stabilising, and that business and consumer confidence was up.

However, the Commission expressed concern that only eight Member States, including the UK, had actually implemented the Package. The Commission has started enforcement action against the remaining seven - Belgium, France, Germany, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Portugal.