e-commerce - legal aspects of new technologies

Just before the most intensive holiday online sales period, businesses need to implement changes ensuring customers have equal access to goods and services regardless of their nationality, place of residence or place of business. From 3 December 2018, the Geo-blocking Regulation (2018/302) applies throughout the European Union.

We wrote about this proposal earlier (text only in Polish), but due to the commencement of the bans and changes to the adopted final regulation, we come back to the subject.

According to a Eurobarometer survey, 42% of EU-based SMEs – sellers, game companies or for instance online travel agents – use online platforms to sell their products and services. As many as 82% of these firms use search engines on these platforms to promote their products and services.

Online platforms are a huge force driving the e-economy, through which SMEs have unlimited access to millions of prospective customers. They are becoming increasingly important as vital go-betweens in online transacting of business. The operators of these online platforms are well aware of this and frequently exploit this reliance in platform-to-business relationships with firms offering their products and services to end customers.