e-Commerce Directive

The e-Commerce Directive

The Directive establishes harmonised rules on issues such as:

• transparency and information requirements for online service providers;
• commercial communications;
• electronic contracts and limitations of liability of intermediary service providers.

It also enhances administrative cooperation between the Member States, and the role of self-regulation.

Basic rules for e-Commerce

The Directive sets out basic requirements on mandatory consumer information, steps to follow in online contracting and rules on commercial communications. This covers online advertisements, unsolicited commercial communications and more.

The internal market clause

The internal market clause is a key principle of the e-Commerce Directive. It ensures that providers of online services are subject to the law of the Member State in which they are established and not the law of the Member States where the service is accessible.

Liability of intermediaries

The Directive exempts intermediaries from liability for the content they manage if they fulfil certain conditions. Service providers hosting illegal need to remove it or disable access to it as fast as possible once they are aware of the illegal nature it. The liability exemption only covers services who play a neutral, merely technical and passive role towards the hosted content.

Member States cannot force any general content monitoring obligation on intermediaries.

Services covered by the Directive

The EU is focused on defining an appropriate e-commerce framework and preventing unfair discrimination against consumers and businesses who access content or buy goods and services online within the EU.

Examples of services covered by the Directive include:

• online information services
• online selling of products and services
• online advertising
• professional services
• entertainment services and basic intermediary services, including services provided free of charge to the recipient, such as those funded by advertising

The Digital Services Act

The Digital Services Act (DSA), proposed by the Commission, builds on the e-Commerce Directive to address new challenges online.

While the e-Commerce Directive remains the cornerstone of digital regulation, much has changed since its adoption 20 years ago. The DSA will address these changes and the challenges that have come with them, particularly in relation to online intermediaries.

Public consultations

The Commission works with consumers, public authorities, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and other interested stakeholders to shape the digital world.

The Commission launched two public consultations 5 as part of the review of the e-Commerce Directive:

• Public consultation on the regulatory environment for platforms, online intermediaries, data and cloud computing and the collaborative economy
• Public consultation on Geo-Blocking and Other geographically based restrictions when shopping and accessing information in the EU

The Commission assessed whether EU rules on e-commerce framework are still up to date, and whether they have helped European citizens and businesses when buying goods and services online.

Expert group

The objectives of the expert group are:

• to enhance and facilitate administrative co-operation between Member States, and Member States and the Commission
• to discuss problems in the application of the Directive
• to discuss emerging issues in the area of e-commerce.

To see its members please refer to the Register of Commission expert groups.