Over the past two decades as the internet grew in Europe, folks reached a point where they wanted to readily utilize internet-purchasing. A good example of this is where you were living in Spain and wanted to buy a particular brand of a washer...made in Germany. Most of the sites that you'd go and use....would refuse the effort to make this cross-the-border type of purchase (Amazon didn't care).
So in stepped the EU and they've written up a regulation, and the details were discussed yesterday via ARD (my public German TV network).
Getting most Europeans to trust purchasing this way has taken a good bit of effort. But most folks under the age of fifty....are willing to make online purchases now. It's an accepted part of life. So they'd like to go onto the next step....buying across borders.
The term 'geo-blocking' is the term that fits. You live in X-country.....you were supposed to buy mostly from that country. So the EU cut geo-blocking loose. You live in X-country, and you can now buy across all 28 member states.
Shipping costs still likely to affect things? Well....yeah. That's another piece to this story.
I suspect that you will start to increased wine and alcohol sales, where you agree to buy an entire crate, and get a discount price, with delivery to your door.
This might also set into motion some VAT scheme by member states where washing machines are dropped to a low VAT....just to get sales pumped up on washers.
Occasionally, the EU will do some smart business and impress me....this is one of those episodes. The trouble will come in two years when complaints arrive, and only by adding more regulation into this simple act....making this more complicated.
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