EU: Communication On Electronic Commerce

On 16 April Mario Monti – the Internal Market Commissioner – and Martin Bangemann – the Industry Commissioner – jointly presented a Communication to the European Parliament and Council, promoting the development of a single market in electronic commerce. The Communication is intended to generate debate concerning electronic commerce and to promote the application of single market principles to the process of doing business electronically. The Commission approved the text on 15 April.

A separate Communication on barriers to the development of electronic commerce in the EU is expected to be published this June. Commissioner Monti has already formally stated his opposition to a “bit tax” (a tax on data transmission); he regards it as an additional, unjustified burden.

Legislative proposals from the Commission to put in place a regulatory framework include:

• legislation on electronic “money” and payment systems by December 1997
• legislation as soon as possible on distance-selling for financial services.

However, the Communication does not anticipate proposing legislation in the area of standardisation of payment systems. It points to the World Wide Web consortia of more 100 IT companies which are developing an interoperable electronic payment system, digital signature system, personal data collection system and content filtering system. If incompatible standards impinge on EU business and consumers, the Commission will reconsider its position.