Forum calls on EU to drop online retail plans
Business support organisation the Forum of Private Business (FPB) has called on the EU to abandon proposals which could “cripple” smaller online retailers.
Under Article 22a of the forthcoming EU Consumer Rights Directive, web-based independent traders could soon be obliged to sell their products to almost every country in Europe.
And under Article 17 of the directive, businesses would be forced to pay the postage costs if a customer decides to return goods worth more than £35, within up to two weeks of a purchase being made.
The FPB said it was concerned that selling to all EU nations would be “highly impractical” for small to medium-sized enterprises, adding that the effect of the two articles together could be “devastating”.
FPB chief executive Phil Orford said: “While we welcome the Consumer Rights Directive’s overall aim of harmonising and simplifying retail regulations across the EU, several of the proposals it contains are extremely ill-advised and, implemented together, could create a ‘perfect storm’ for independent web-based retailers.
“Being obliged to sell to every single country in the EU may not be a problem for multi-national companies, but it could spell the death knell for countless SMEs in the ecommerce industry.”
He added that many independent online retailers only have the expertise and the infrastructure to sell to the domestic market, or to a select few overseas countries, and some have built themselves up around one particular product which they are only licensed to sell in a certain national market.
“We are calling on the EU to see sense and make sure these particular parts of the directive are dropped,” he said.
