Within the European Union, a regulation has been adopted addressing the issue of so-called geoblocking (hereinafter referred to as the “Regulation”), which may have impacts on the practice of online traders, including impacts on the technical solutions of shops that use multiple language versions. According to its recital (preamble), the aim of this Regulation is to address unjustified geographical blocking by removing certain obstacles to the functioning of the internal market and thus preventing discrimination on the basis of nationality, place of residence or place of establishment of customers in cross-border transactions. On the other hand, the Regulation realistically states in its preamble that “significant obstacles to cross-border trade” are still posed by a number of differences in the legal regulations of Member States. In our conditions, the language barrier can certainly also be mentioned.

The Regulation entered into force on 3 December 2018 and primarily addresses three basic points. Specifically, these concern the issue of access to the (online) interface of electronic commerce, the prohibition of different terms and conditions for customers from different countries, and the inadmissibility of discrimination on grounds related to payment. We address these issues in more detail below. According to the provision of Article 3(1) of the Regulation, a trader must not “by technical means or otherwise block or restrict a customer’s access to the trader’s online interface for reasons related to the customer’s nationality, place of residence or place of establishment.” The provision of Article 3(2) of the Regulation then stipulates that “a trader must not, for reasons related to the customer’s nationality, place of residence or place of establishment, reroute that customer…, unless the customer has expressly consented in advance to such rerouting.” This means that it will be prohibited to carry out automatic rerouting of a customer to another language version of the shop without his consent. Furthermore, “in the case of rerouting with the customer’s express consent, the version of the trader’s online interface to which the customer initially sought to gain access must remain easily accessible to that customer.” This regulation may therefore have impacts on the technical solutions of online shops, although it does not apply to situations where such restriction of access or rerouting is necessary for the purpose of ensuring compliance with the trader’s obligation.

The prohibition of different terms and conditions for customers from different EU countries is then regulated by the provision of Article 4(1)(a) of the Regulation, which stipulates that “a trader must not apply different general conditions of access to goods and services for reasons related to the customer’s nationality, place of residence or place of establishment, where the customer seeks to purchase goods from the trader and those goods are delivered to a place in a Member State to which the trader offers delivery in the general conditions of access…” This means that, for example, if a customer from Austria orders delivery of goods to an address in the Czech Republic, a Czech trader must not apply different conditions to him than those he applies to his Czech customers. The Regulation expressly stipulates that mere compliance with this prohibition by the trader should not mean that the trader is directing his activities towards Austrian customers. Nor does it mean that the trader should in this case be obliged to comply with requirements laid down by Austrian law that “relate to the relevant goods and services, or that he is obliged to inform customers about these requirements.”

In conclusion, we state that according to the provision of Article 5(1) of the Regulation, “a trader must not, within the payment means it accepts, apply, for reasons related to the customer’s nationality, place of residence or place of establishment, the location of the payment account, the place of establishment of the payment service provider or the place of issue of the payment instrument within the Union, different conditions for a payment transaction…”, provided that the further stipulated prerequisites are met. These prerequisites include in particular where “the payment transaction is carried out by an electronic payment transaction, direct debit or card-based payment instrument within the same payment brand and category…” and “the currency of the transaction is a currency which the trader accepts.”

Josef Aujezdský, advocate

Law Firm Mašek, Kočí, Aujezdský www.e-Advokacie.cz – online legal advisory

This text was originally prepared by the law firm Mašek, Kočí, Aujezdský in cooperation with the Association for Electronic Commerce (APEK) as legal circular No. 04/2018 intended for members of this association.

This text was translated from Czech to English using an AI translator.