Marketers are pressing for changes to proposed Europe-wide rules
which they claim will cause advertisers to shun the internet.
They believe the proposals will become a nightmare for companies, which
will have to ensure that what they offer conforms not only to the laws
of their own countries but to those of all 14 other EU member
states.
The controversy is the result of the European Commission’s newly
published directive on electronic commerce transactions.
After pressure from European consumer organisations, the commission has
tightened up earlier proposals which would have made companies
advertising on the internet subject to the laws of the country where
they are based, rather than those in which their services are
received.
Now, the revised directive allows dissatisfied consumers who buy via the
internet to have recourse to their own national consumer protection laws
and national courts if an advertiser has not met its contractual
obligations.
Britain’s Direct Marketing Association is urging the Department of Trade
and Industry to help change the proposals. And the Federation of
European Direct Marketing Associations has protested to the
commission.
’There will be a lot of fraught discussions over these proposals,’
Lionel Stanbrook, the Advertising Association’s deputy director-general,
said.
’Not only will they make it very difficult to sell anything via the
internet but they’ll allow the lawyers to do very well out of them.’
Leaders of the direct marketing industry argue that, instead of giving
consumers added protection, the proposed rules will end up giving them
more limited choice.
Colin Fricker, the DMA’s director of legal affairs, said: ’Consumer
organisations do not fully understand the implications of these
proposals. In the long term, consumers will be prejudiced by them. The
fact is that there are European laws already in place which give
adequate protection.’
The DMA fears that the rules, if enacted, would result in self-enforced
trade restrictions and would have a serious effect on small direct
marketing operations unable to deal with 15 different legal systems.
One solution being mooted by the DMA is to make it possible for a
customer responding to an internet ad to call up the relevant consumer
protection laws of the advertiser’s home country translated into their
native language.
