Press Release: Consumers: Online shopping increasingly popular in the EU, but development ‘held back by barriers to cross border trade

A new report on 'Barriers to E-commerce', presented by EU Consumer Commissioner Meglena Kuneva showed that online shopping is increasingly popular in the EU, but warns that barriers to cross border trade are holding back its development. The report published on 5 March, 2009, presented a detailed analysis of current trends in e-commerce across the EU – including per country, most purchased items and obstacles for consumers and business online. Between 2006 and 2008 the proportion of EU consumers buying at least one item over the internet increased from 27% to 33%. These average figures mask the huge popularity of online shopping in countries like UK, France and Germany where more than 50% of internet users have made online purchases in the last year. In the Nordic countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Iceland) the proportion of internet users who bought products and services online was 91% in 2008. Countries like Italy and Spain are also fast growing markets. Against this pattern of fast growing national markets, the extent of online purchasing cross border remains small, at only 7% in 2008 (compared to 6% in 2006). The report warned that numerous obstacles - linguistic, practical and regulatory as well as important trust issues – are holding back the development of online shopping in the EU.

European Commission: MEMO/09/94: E-commerce in the EU http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/95&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

European Commission: SPEECH/09/91: Barriers to eCommerce in the EU http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=SPEECH/09/91&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

---