THE NEW EU REGULATION ON GEOBLOCKING

On December 3, 2018, Regulation (EU) 2018/302 entered into force, introducing measures to prevent geo-blocking and other forms of discrimination against customers based on nationality, place of residence, or place of establishment within the internal market.

This is an important measure that contributes to the creation of the Digital Single Market and will help foster the development of cross-border e-commerce by removing unjustified geographic restrictions imposed by certain suppliers of goods and services, which can lead to discriminatory business practices.

In particular, operators of e-commerce sites must remove any unjustified restrictions based on nationality in order to allow users to access the Site; redirection to another site must be authorized by the User through their express consent to the redirection; purchase forms (online order forms) must allow all Users in another Member State to submit an order.

In addition, merchants will not be allowed to charge consumers discriminatory prices:

• in the sale of goods that are to be delivered to a Member State where the merchant offers shipping or that are picked up at a specific location agreed upon with the customer;

• in the sale of electronically supplied services, such as cloud computing;

• in the sale of services that consumers receive at the trader’s place of business, including hotel stays, car rentals, or attendance at a sporting event.

The Regulation does not require price harmonization at the EU level; consequently, retailers will remain free to set their own prices, provided they do so in a non-discriminatory manner.

It is important that consumers and businesses are aware of their rights, their obligations, and the limits of the Regulation, which is intended to help improve the market without impacting or burdening operators by creating fair conditions for market access.