E-Commerce News- Round up of European Legislation

1. E-Commerce Directive Update

The E-Commerce Directive (Directive 2000/31/EC) has two main objectives, firstly, to establish a legal framework for the development of e-commerce throughout the European Union; and, secondly, to ensure that a wide range of electronically delivered services benefit from the Internal Market principles of free movement of services and freedom of establishment. Principally, where service providers are able to comply with the law in their country of origin (i.e, their home Member State), they will be able to provide their services throughout the EU with the benefit of harmonised rules.

To recap, the Directive addresses the following principal areas of relevance to information society service providers:

recognition of electronic contracts by obliging Member State to adjust national legislation to remove prohibitions or restrictions on the use of electronic media for forming contracts;

ensuring legal security by clarifying the moment of conclusion or formation of the online contract;

online enforcement mechanisms, such as, alternative cross-board dispute settlement systems, and court redress, etc;

imposing requirements on the provision of commercial communications by an information service society provider. For example, clearly defined rules governing online advertising and direct mail;

applying the Single Market principle of "mutual recognition" to on-line services - a service provider will in principal only have to comply with one country's laws to do business across the EU. This, however, will not apply to tax, personal data or gambling activities;

addressing the liability of on-line intermediaries for providing access to the network and for transmitting and storing information;

defining and setting out conditions for the place of establishment of information society service providers.

Having been adopted on 8th June 2000 and subsequently published in the Official Journal of the European Communities on 17th July 2000, the E-Commerce Directive has continued to make progress towards implementation. Member States now have until 16 January 2002 to implement the requirements of the Directive. In the UK, the Government is currently planning to implement the Directive through secondary legislation, in particular, under Section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972.

On 10th August 2001, the DTI published a public consultation document entitled 'Consultation document on implementation of the E-Commerce Directive' which it put forward to a wide range of individuals, companies and 'representative' organisations. The Consultation document sets out the specific requirements of the Directive, an assessment of the Government's approach to preparing Regulations and a request for consultees to respond to specific questions raised by the DTI. In addition, the DTI has also published a 'Regulation impact assessment', which can be found at the back of the Consultation document.

The aim of the Consultation document will be to obtain these responses from the public in order to assist the Government with preparing the draft Regulations to implement the Directive. Any guidance produced by the DTI for businesses and consumers will also stem from this document.

Consultees now have until 2nd November 2001 to make their submissions to the DTI.

For more information and a copy of the Consultant document, visit the DTI Website on:

http://www.dti.gov.uk/cii/ecommerce/europeanpolicy/ECD_consolidated_version.pdf.

2. The Directive For The Distance Selling Of Financial Services -Council Of Ministers Reach Political Agreement

The proposed Directive for the Distance Selling of Financial Services is designed to supplement the Distance Selling Directive (97/7/EC), which sought to protect consumers when concluding contracts for goods and services over a distance. It did...