The digital single market

The European Commission (EC) has unveiled its ‘digital single market’. It is built on three ‘pillars’:

1.  Better access for consumers and businesses to digital goods and services across Europe
2.  Creating the right conditions and a level playing field for digital networks and innovative services to flourish
3.  Maximising the growth potential of the digital economy

On access

• Rules will make cross-border e-commerce easier. This includes harmonised EU rules on contracts and consumer protection when you buy online, whether it is physical goods like shoes or furniture or digital content like e-books or apps. Consumers are set to benefit from a wider range of rights and offers, while businesses will more easily sell to other EU countries. This is intended to boost confidence for consumers to shop and businesses to sell across borders.
• Enforcing consumer rules more rapidly and consistently, by reviewing the Regulation on Consumer Protection C-ooperation.
• Improving efficient and affordable parcel delivery  currently 62% of companies trying to sell online say that too-high parcel delivery costs are a barrier.
• An end to unjustified geo-blocking – a discriminatory practice used for commercial reasons, when online sellers either deny consumers access to a website based on their location, or re-route them to a local store with different prices. Such blocking means that, for example, car rental customers from different member statse may end up paying more for an identical car rental in the same destination.
• Identifying potential competition concerns affecting European e-commerce markets, to which end the EC has launched an antitrust competition inquiry into the e-commerce sector in the European Union.
• Modernising European copyright law. Legislative proposals will follow before the end of 2015 to reduce the differences between national copyright regimes and allow for wider online access to works across the EU, including through further harmonisation measures. The aim is to improve people’s access to cultural content online – thereby nurturing cultural diversity – while opening new opportunities for creators and the content industry. In particular, the EC wants to ensure that users who buy films, music or articles at home can also enjoy them while travelling across Europe. The EC will also look at the role of online intermediaries in relation to copyright-protected work. It will step up enforcement against commercial-scale infringements of intellectual property rights.
• A review of the Satellite and Cable Directive will assess whether its scope needs to be enlarged to include broadcasters’ online transmissions and to explore how to boost cross-border access to broadcasters’ services in Europe.
• Reducing the administrative burden businesses face from different VAT regimes so that sellers of physical goods to other countries also benefit from single electronic registration and payment and with a common VAT threshold to help smaller start-ups selling online.

A level playing field

• Overhaul of EU telecoms rules, including more effective spectrum c-oordination and common EU-wide criteria for spectrum assignment at national level; creating incentives for investment in high-speed broadband; ensuring a level playing field for all market players, traditional and new, and creating an effective institutional framework.
• A review of the audiovisual media framework to make it fit for the 21st century, focusing on the roles of the different market players in the promotion of European works (TV broadcasters, on-demand audiovisual service providers, etc.). It wil lalso look at how to adapt existing rules (the Audiovisual Media Services Directive) to new business models for content distribution.
• Comprehensively analyse the role of online platforms (search engines, social media, app stores, etc.) in the market. This will cover issues such as the non-transparency of search results and of pricing policies, how such organisations use the information they acquire, relationships between platforms and suppliers and the promotion of their own services to the disadvantage of competitors – to the extent these are not already covered by competition law. It will also look into how to best tackle illegal content on the internet.
• Reinforce trust and security in digital services, notably concerning the handling of personal data. Building on the new EU data protection rules, due to be adopted by the end of 2015, the EC will review the e-Privacy Directive.
• Propose a partnership with the industry on cybersecurity in the area of technologies and solutions for online network security.

Maximising growth

• Proposing a ‘European free flow of data initiative’ to promote the free movement of data in the EU. Sometimes new services are hampered by restrictions on where data is located or on data access – restrictions which often do not have anything to do with protecting personal data. This initiative will tackle those restrictions and so encourage innovation. The EC will also launch a European Cloud initiative covering certification of cloud services, the switching of cloud service providers and a ‘research cloud’.
• Defining priorities for standards and interoperability in areas critical to the digital single market, such as e-health, transport planning or energy (smart metering).
• Supporting an inclusive digital society where citizens have the right skills to seize the opportunities of the internet and boost their chances of getting a job. A new e-government action plan will also connect business registers across Europe, ensure different national systems can work with each other, and ensure businesses and citizens only have to communicate their data once to public administrations, so that governments no longer make multiple requests for the same information when they can use the information they already have. This ‘only once’ initiative will cut red tape and potentially save around €5bn per year by 2017. The roll-out of e-procurement and interoperable e-signatures will be accelerated.

david manners

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