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EuroCommerce today partnered with the European Business Summit in a special session of the Summit on Tapping the Potential of the E-Commerce Market for Europe.EuroCommerce Director-General Christian Verschueren took the opportunity to underline the important changes facing retail and wholesale in a market seeing consumers shift dramatically to buying online and expecting products delivered to their doors almost immediately. He made a direct request to European policymakers to equip the sector with rules which made it possible to respond to these changes, and to face down increasing protectionist tendencies in national markets across Europe:
“Europe needs to harness the power of the largest market in the developed world in order to compete with other rapidly growing digital economies worldwide. While digital content is an important part of e-commerce, tangible goods remain the most important element of online selling for our sector. The Digital Single Market can therefore only function if we have a harmonised and workable Single Market for goods, and one fit for the digital age. The barriers that still exist, and a worrying tendency by many Member States to create new ones, are a priority for all three EU institutions and national governments to tackle, either by enforcing existing rules or agreeing new rules when this makes sense. Europe needs action to allow consumers and traders to make the most of the potential of a market of 500 million Europeans, and we need this now.”