Ban on geo-blocking and geo-discrimination

On 25 May 2016, as part of her Digital Single Market strategy, the European Commission published a proposal for a regulation prohibiting geo-blocking and other forms of geo-discrimination (i.e. discrimination based on a customer's nationality, place of residence or place of establishment). The draft-regulation has a wide scope. With the ban on geo-blocking and geo-discrimination, the proposal aims to eliminate discrimination when it comes to the conditions of sales, payment transaction conditions, application of sales prices, delivery conditions and etcetera when selling to EU-customers from other Member States. In addition to the scope of the regulation, this article focuses on the interface of the regulation with the competition rules, including the e-commerce sector inquiry currently conducted by the European Commission (DG Competition) and finally, the impact of the regulation on the day-to-day business of undertakings.