This new regulation aims to prevent unjustified geoblocking and other forms of discrimination based on the customer's nationality, place of residence, or place of establishment. Free trade within the European Single Market is to be further strengthened.
What are the impacts of the regulation on my online shop?
The Geoblocking Regulation (EU Regulation 2018/302) has several implications for online shop operators. Specifically, measures that discriminate against customers based on their place of residence or the establishment of their company and cannot be justified are prohibited under the new regulation.
We summarize the key implications for your online shop
1. You must generally design your online shop to ensure that all interested parties from EU member states can access your online shop without hindrance. You may not exclude any interested parties from European member states from your online shop. If you operate a multilingual online shop, further specific considerations apply. Exceptions to this obligation exist for access restrictions that are necessary to comply with legal requirements.
2. You may not use different terms and conditions that are determined by the customer's nationality, place of residence, or place of establishment.
3. You may not exclude customers from other European countries from purchasing goods in your online shop. This means that you may not restrict the sale of your goods to customers from the Federal Republic of Germany. This will be impermissible as of December 3, 2018.
You must now also enable customers from EU member states to purchase goods in your online shop. However, this does not create a delivery obligation to ship goods abroad. You may continue to restrict the delivery area to the territory of the Federal Republic of Germany.
If this is the case and a customer from another European country provides a delivery address in the Federal Republic of Germany, you must sell the goods to this European customer and ship them to the domestic address. If you allow for the collection of purchased goods at your business premises, a customer from another European country must also be allowed to collect the purchased goods at your business premises.
4. Furthermore, it is prohibited to apply different conditions for a payment transaction within the scope of the payment conditions offered in the online shop, based on the customer's nationality, place of residence or establishment, the location of the payment account, the place of establishment of the payment service provider, or the place of issuance of the payment instrument within the Union.
This means that you must accept payments from foreign accounts if the payment method is offered in the online shop. You may also not unjustifiably restrict payment methods to individual countries.
What changes, if any, do I need to implement in my online shop?
Summary of Required Actions:
1. You may need to adapt the General Terms and Conditions (GTCs) in your online shop to reflect the new legal framework. All clients who have had their GTCs drafted by us and are subscribed to our update service will automatically receive updated GTCs.
2. You must ensure that your online shop accepts billing addresses from other countries.
3. You must ensure that customers are not discriminated against when selecting payment methods, meaning that generally equivalent payment options should be available to all customers, both domestic and from other European countries.
4. There must be no access restrictions to your online shop for prospective customers located outside the Federal Republic of Germany.
We are, of course, readily available to address any queries regarding this topic.
GoldbergUllrich Attorneys at Law 2018
