Proposal for a Regulation on addressing geo-blocking and other forms of discrimination based on customers’ nationality, place of residence or place of establishment within the internal market

The Digital Single Market Strategy adopted in May 2015 and the Single Market Strategy adopted in October 2015 announced legislative action to address unjustified geo-blocking and comprehensively fight discrimination based on nationality or place of residence or establishment (in this explanatory memorandum for ease of reference all referred to as "residence").

The general objective of this proposal is to give customers better access to goods and services in the Single Market by preventing direct and indirect discrimination by traders artificially segmenting the market based on customers' residence. Customers experience such differences in treatment when purchasing online, but also when travelling to other Member States to buy goods or services.

Despite the implementation of the non-discrimination principle in Article 20(2) of Directive 2006/123/EC ("Services Directive"), customers still face refusals to sell and different conditions, when buying goods or services across borders. This is mainly due to uncertainty over what constitutes objective criteria that justify differences in the way traders treat customers. In order to remedy this problem, traders and customers should have more clarity about the situations in which differences in treatment based on residence are not justifiable.

This proposal prohibits the blocking of access to websites and other online interfaces and the rerouting of customers from one country version to another. It furthermore prohibits discrimination against customers in four specific cases of the sale of goods and services and does not allow the circumventing of such a ban on discrimination in passive sales agreements. Both consumers and businesses as end users of goods or services are affected by such practices and should therefore benefit from the rules set out in this proposal.

The European Commission adopted in May 2016 a proposed Regulation concerning tackling unjustified geoblocking within the European Union.

EUR-Lex: COM(2016)289: Follow the progress of this proposal through the decision-making procedure http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/HIS/?uri=COM:2016:289:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2016)173: Impact assessment http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2016:173:FIN

EUR-Lex: SWD(2016)174: Executive summary of the impact assessment http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=SWD:2016:174:FIN

ESO: Background information: Commission proposes new e-commerce rules to help consumers and companies reap full benefit of Single Market http://www.europeansources.info/record/commission-launches-e-commerce-package/

European Parliament: Subject Files: Geo-blocking regulation http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/imco/subject-files.html?id=20170217CDT01221

European Parliament: Legislative Train Schedule: Ending unjustified geo-blocking http://www.europarl.europa.eu/legislative-train/theme-connected-digital-single-market/file-geo-blocking

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